Chronic Pain

Yep, that's me sometimes. And sometimes it's because of the aforementioned title. If you know me more than casually, you know that I live with chronic pain from what I sometimes call the triumvirate of evil: fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. I know the last ailment in that group is supposed to be painless, but I think it's responsible for the weak hollow feeling that I swear resides in my bones and not in my muscles.

And if you know me in person, you know that while I do talk about pain, sometimesit seems to me ad nauseum, I am also loathe to accept it, to call it for example "my pain".

But it is my pain, and chronic pain changes the way we live our lives. The facts are these: one, while there are places in my body that always hurt every day (neck, lower back and feet) there are also places that hurt intermittently; two, if I talked about pain, that would seem to me linguistically imprecise because it's the combination of types of pain(s) (stinging, aching, and sharp) that really kicks my butt, so to speak; finally, the problem of pain is, for me, compounded by things like my hands and feet don't work in the morning, so I stumble around and drop things a lot.

What I'm doing about it:
Well, I get a Boniva shot every three months. I take Zyflamend, CoQ10 and calcium every day and even tried Savella until the side effects became unbearable. I take ibuprophen and acetaminophen together when it's impossible to function without it. I stretch and try to do yoga, but I've given up walking for now because it makes my legs hurt too much the next day.

What I'm going to do about it:
I'm going to start acupuncture and in November I'm going to a neurologist my rheumatologist is sending me to.

I have recently learned that even though I thought bizarre cross doctor situations were little more than fodder for internet discussion groups and lifetime movies, you can (well, I can) become embroiled in some ridiculousness. My general practitioner, I found out recently, does not believe in rheumatologists or fibromyalgia. So I was treated to a lecture, just what I needed. My rheumatologist's physicians assistant seemed cranky at best the last time I was there a month or so ago and blamed everything on the "fibro". Everything that is until we got to the part where I said my feet won't hold me up first thing in the morning.

What I feel about writing this right:
Yeah, I feel like a whiner; I admit it. I would like to be the same woman who was able to ignore chronic pain for the 15 or so years I've had it, but it just didn't hurt so damn badly then. Maybe all that "ignorance" is part of why my pain has now become so hard to manage.

Why I'm writing this right now:
Well I was hoping that maybe someone would do a google search, see this blog, and read this and get some information about what I'm doing to keep afloat.
Murf