I read this and wept this morning. Recently I had a conversation with my wife concerning my RSDS. She knows there are things I can no longer do, make love being one of them, but I had to breakdown and explain that lifting loads of laundry to the dryer, mopping the kitchen floor, (yes I am a house husband), or carrying a bag of groceries, can cause my RSDS to spike. I told her how much I hate being in pain from LITTLE THINGS. I asked for help...finally. And my wife and youngest girl still at home, rose to the occasion.
It helps emotionally. But...the pain still hovers. It is a constant. Sometimes better, sometimes not.
On rare times I have no pain.

My new orthopedist asked my pain level was. I told her to throw out the 1 to 10 measurement.
Here was mine.
1. You take an aspirin in the morning.
2. Socks irritate the feet, you want to go barefoot but the rug feels like gravel.
3. Little ants crawl under the skin...you want to scratch the little bastards into oblivion.
4. You want to shower with lidocaine...the invisible sunburn is all over your body.
5. You take coedine in the morning along with your coffee...make that a double.
6. Feels like you've washed your hands in acidic water. Cold cream doesn't help.
7. You want to throw up from the pain.
8. You can't barely get out of bed without help...you cry.
9. You think about suicide all the time.
10. You actually try suicide.

Today is a coedine morning.

Thanks for sharing. It does help.

CG

zanne,

i've recently been down this line of thought as well. i find myself wondering whether the fact that i don't take as much breakthrough medicine as i have in the past is because the pain is better, or because the breakthrough episodes just aren't as distressing -- i've learned how to get through the pain i used to find unbearable, though there are still lots of times it gets bad. it just seems like where at first every spike of pain was a crisis, an intrusion, a change from "normal", it's become the norm to be in pain and the contrast no longer shows distress in sharp relief. i find i rarely talk about or complain about pain anymore, unless there's something specific i'm being asked to do that i can't.

i have forgotten what it feels like to not be in pain. even now, as i write this, if i take an inventory i realize that i'm gritting my teeth and clenching my jaw against the constant stream of pain that feels like it's flowing through my veins -- and this is normal. hardly enough to even reach for some fentanyl.

what was life like before pills? on a given day i take 47 pills, not counting the breakthrough meds, the nausea meds, the ritalin i take at times to stay awake through the opiate and cancer treatment induced fatigue. add in a couple of ibuprofen, imitrex for the migraine, and it's close to 70 pills every single day.

no wonder people with chronic pain have so many comorbid conditions.

i'm not sure whether this is better than before, when i had hope it would get better. i suppose in some ways it's better to be able to live your life without those high emotion crisis points than to have those slivers of hope to clutch.

I have an anger and resentment thing going. Why go to the doctor, when they don't really do anything? I used to eagerly race off to the next specialist, hoping for that "cure". Maybe some operation or pill or shot or brace or something would do the trick. There isn't anything.

Pain management. That's been a joke. I have such bad side effects from things I've tried from the doctor, I'm not even sure what is worse. The pain or the treatment. I can be miserably in pain like now, but I can stay awake. I feel full of pain but kind of normal, not zonked on some weird medication. I'm afraid to try anything because of the last few things I'd tried were so bad.

No healthy people (the pain free people, that is) understand. They don't get it at all. They don't know how bad it hurts. And things have gotten much worse since I last talked to you Zanne. I did have a couple of goodish days though, and got a bit of cleaning done. I'm FORCING myself to do a bit. It makes the pain worse, but I haven't figured out how to train cats to wash walls.

That pain scale. I always say 5. I don't remember what it was like to not feel pain. It's like some dream. But as it gets steadily worse, I still say it's a 5. It can always get worse than this. I find that out every time I stub my toe. Hah!

My MRI did show some stuff, arthitis in the spine and something with the disks and something with a nerve hole (which is where I get the shooting pain in the leg from). Depression has gotten worse, especially since being on Tribe. I don't feel productive and I don't feel like I'm helping or doing any good at all. Mostly people end up mad at me. So I unsubscribe after I get too stressed, ditch everything I had and start again.

I'd love to be able to ditch this body and start again. This one hurts too much.

Things are worse. Hope fades. Reality as it is sets in. Leaving me sad and broken and sore and tired.