Pain Chronicles

Dealing with chronic pain is absolutely miserable. You can do everything you can to cope with it, manage it, and there remains a singular irrevocable fact. There is always pain. You get used to a certain level. Almost comfortable with it. This is my baseline, and while I’m not pain free, this is the level that I can manage comfortable and live my life the way I want to. 

Have you stopped to consider how absolutely absurd that statement is? 

If you break out that ever so lovely pain chart with the faces that dictates from 0 to 10, the starting point, the norm, where you’re supposed to be is 0. With that ever so annoying smiley face floating above or below it. My starting point, on my good days, is a 4. 

My good days start in that Moderate Pain area. I honestly don’t remember when I haven’t felt pain. It’s always there. Now some are all good with the visual representation of pain with varying degrees of the smiley face. However, I like descriptions of what that means. I need it operationally defined for my understanding because it helps me wrap my head around it. So there’s this:

This helps me wrap my head around what the varying degrees of smiley or not so smiley means. So I start my day at a 4 and it rarely stays there. At a four I’m constantly aware of it, but I push through. Like fuck it, it could be worse, and often times, it is. It fluctuates throughout the day starting at a 4 and going into that 5 to 6 range because I’m so used to being aware of the pain that I sometimes forget it gets worse if I’m not careful. So on my “Good” days, I’ll tweak things and hit a 5 for a little while and avoid certain activities and then I’ll hit that 6 because I keep pushing through. I can’t let the pain keep me from living. I have a fiancé, kids, animals, a job, staff, I have things I need to do…

But sometimes I just can’t. Sometimes we creep into that 7 and up area. Where I start to shut down. First I’m in that 7 where I just have to keep myself focused on something but physically, can’t do much, because when I do. Oh when I do. Then we get into the 8 and 9 range. It pulsates in between the two where I can almost get out a sentence, I can almost finish a thought, then BAM. Shut down. 

But I can’t just stop living from the pain. I can’t tolerate many prescription pain killers. The only choice I have is to breathe through it and keep going. Keep moving. Keep doing the things that stop it from getting this bad. 

Then there’s the factors I can’t control. Storms coming in. Drastic temperature changes. Sometimes just being really cold outside will do it. No matter how well I do the management techniques. The exercise. The stretching. Hot showers. Rest. Mindfulness. All of those things… it all goes out the window.

And I’m left. 

Left on the floor. Unable to do anything other than breathe. And sometimes breathing is so painful you hold your breath as long as you can because the movement involved in even the most shallow of breathes in excruciating.

This is how I live. On average, I have periods of 7 and up days 3 times a month. The majority of days are 4 to 6. 

Most days, I’m ok, but then, I’m so tired of being in pain. I keep going and I’m not going to stop but it’s frustrating when I have to deal the the United States Department of Veteran Affairs and they don’t recognize Chronic Pain as a condition. It has to be related to a service connected injury. Which I have, but everything has to be tied to that and you need write ups from Doctors citing research and it’s all tied to your ability to earn money and nothing to do with your quality of life. Sometimes it’s not worth the fight. 

I get it, we need to live. VA Compensation is about compensating for lost income due to injuries from service. And yet, can we please consider our quality of life with this? When was the last time you had a day where you were in pain? How did that impact your mood? Were you more or less irritable with people you interacted with? Did you enjoy the things you love any less? Did you wish it would just stop?

Because when you get into the mental side of it. The level of emotional exhaustion from being in pain. Then pile on the anxiety tied to work and family life. I have an understanding employer but in the end I need to be able to do my job. Since retiring from the Marine Corps in 2014, every time I’ve missed work, it’s been related in some way to the chronic pain or the impact that the pain has on my physically and mentally. Over the years, it takes a toll.

With all of this. I’ll stand up, but damn, I’m tired.