Archives for posts with tag: arthritis pain
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Um… Ouch?

October 22, 2017 //
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I woke in pain.

Damn it. A sentence that short doesn’t do the moment justice. Rainy, chilly, autumn days, and colder night-time temperatures, and here it is time again for my arthritis pain to become a serious shot-caller in my day-to-day experience. Damn, this sucks. I woke hurting, couldn’t roll over because my spine was locked up, rigid and aching, from my waist to my shoulders. I laid still with the pain for a few moments, taking time to be aware that I was able to breathe “comfortably” – for some values of “comfort” – and confirming fingers and toes move, and that I felt sensations in extremities.

Time for the winter practices, already? Yeah, looks that way. I slowly, with great determination, begin moving the bits and pieces that do seem pretty mobile. I flex fingers, arms, toes, feet, legs. I stretch anything that stretches. I find adequate leverage to roll to my back. I pull my knees to my chest one by one, and begin working on arching my back some small bit. I push-pull-rock and get rolled first to one side, then the other. Repeat all the motions on each side. Eventually, I am able to roll to my right side, push myself up on an elbow, pull myself the rest of the way using the arm on the other side, and a firm grasp on the edge of the pillow top of the mattress. Sitting up! Yes! It feels like triumph.

I sit for a few minutes, ignoring the tears – a combination of pain and relief, that spilled over as I sat up. Mornings like this one, I am “painfully aware” (lol) that one day I won’t be able to easily live alone; I’ll need help with basic things, at some point. Aging is a thing. I am definitely living that process. I sigh, and the sound fills the otherwise quiet room. Maybe a shower will help?

The long minutes lingering in a hot shower leaves my skin reddened in places, but my spine is a bit more flex-y, as a spine ideally would be. I don’t hurt quite so much. I can dress, with care, and anything to do with standing is as easy as ever, and that means – coffee. 🙂 My coffee this morning even turned out wonderfully well, and I am enjoying it with a smile that has no trace of the pain I woke in. Oh, I still hurt; it’s that sort of day. It’s more manageable now, is all, and that is enough.

I sip my coffee and think about the phone call with my Traveling Partner last night, sharing his autumn and winter travel plans with me. I think, now, about how those may/can change my own plans. I smile. The physical distance doesn’t change much for me; we talk regularly, and the specifics of distance are irrelevant in our digital experience. We see each other when circumstances and choices permit it. (Sure, I will miss him; I always miss him when he isn’t near me, but that doesn’t have to mean drama and bullshit. lol) I was planning to discuss my reluctance to plan regular visits down once the roads begin to freeze, or snow becomes a concern (even though I have chains, it’s just not my preference to tackle long drives in icy/snowy conditions); his plans are such that it just won’t actually be a concern. lol Win and good. Convenient. Stress-free mutually beneficial planning for the win! 🙂

First coffee finished, I make a second, and load a great set, from a favorite DJ who does a regular live cast on Facebook, to get me moving, and hopefully provide additional relief of my pain, and a bit more freedom of movement. Movement hurts, but it helps, too. Hard not to dance to great music.

I spend coffee #2 grooving in my chair, writing, and chatting with my Traveling Partner as we get our mornings started. A promising beginning to a leisurely Sunday. I open my “to do list” and frown at tasks I know I am not going to be able to do with any ease, and scroll through prioritizing the tasks that will be more easily handled today. I smile when I get to the line that says “get enough rest” – that’s one I can check off right now. 🙂

No idea what the day holds, but I’m here. You’re here. There’s an entire day ahead to make something of – and that’s enough. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, Love, medical marijuana, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Hello Autumn, Hello Pain

September 26, 2017 //
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I remember being in pain yesterday, in the afternoon. I woke in pain this morning. One nice thing about unreasonably hot, wildfire-dry, summer weather – those long hot dry days are just about ideal for minimizing my arthritis pain, no Rx required.

I love autumn. I love crisp cool mornings, colder nights, and warm afternoons. I love the shff-shff of fallen leaves, disturbed as I walk through them. I enjoy the short days, the long nights, the late sunrises, the early sunsets. It’s so exquisitely lovely, all of it, that every year as it returns, I am surprised all over again that with it comes pain. Rather a lot of pain. Everyday pain. Waking up in pain. Yoga to ease pain. Enjoying long walks – that also hurt. It is what it is. I’m glad I am able to walk. To stand. To dress myself. This morning, I find room to be amused that another autumn comes, and again I have forgotten that I am always in this much pain. There will be other mornings, colder mornings, on which I no longer find humor in the moment. I’m not in any rush to reach those mornings. I take a moment to appreciate the morning, shored up by perspective on how much less pain I am in right now than I could be.

I have friends who hurt, too. Family members. Loved ones. Pain is part of the human condition. We feel. We experience sensations. Sometimes, feelings are unpleasant. Sometimes sensations are painful. We easily lose sight of the pain of others, living out our own experience of pain. I know it happens to me. When I hurt, and can’t imagine hurting more than I do, it’s way too easy to forget that there actually is more worse pain than what I am in, myself – and someone else is feeling that. Yikes. Talk about perspective. It’s true for you, too; someone else is in worse pain. Possibly more often. It’s something to remember when we face the world, hurting; we are not alone. We may feel alone with our own pain, but we are not alone in the experience of being in pain, generally.

This morning, I am in pain. I’m not bitching. I’m just noticing it there, reflected back at me when I attempt to ignore it, each movement in my spine resulting in mild nausea, and a chronic almost irresistible desire to flex, twist, move, rock – all of which hurts, but the movement may, over some minutes, ease the pain somewhat. I look at the calendar and frown. Not even October? Shit. I feel inclined to say it seems earlier this year – but I say that, and feel it, every year. lol This year, I commit to caring for myself in a reasonable and rational way (still, and, again). I take a deep breath. I let it go. I get up from my chair and do some more yoga. It helps.

I abandon my writing and take another hot shower. Lingering in the hot water, I catch myself daydreaming about the heated seat in my car and the 45 minute commute to work enjoying it. Oh, Autumn, you are so beautiful and so cruel to me! I laugh about it, because this morning I still can.

I make a mental note to myself to be kind to people; I can’t tell what kind of pain they may be in, or how hard they are having to work at being decent to people, themselves. We’re all so very human. We are interconnected, and our shared experiences color the experiences we don’t share. Being a jerk to someone can so easily become the experience that blows their day – just as a moment of kindness can turn a bad day around completely. I consider the woman I most want to be, and commit to be more her today than I was yesterday. I give a mental shout out to the friends who seem to have really mastered “self” and “have their shit together” in all the ways that matter most to me. I find myself thinking about old-fashioned thank you notes.

The morning moves on. I sip my coffee. I scroll through my playlist absent-mindedly, unsure whether I actually want to hear music this morning. Pain, coloring my thinking, changes my decision-making in subtle ways; something to be mindful of as the day goes on.

It seems like a good time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, The Art of Being, The Big 5

The Morning Macabre

December 18, 2016 //
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I woke from a restless interrupted sleep earlier than I’d have liked to, and feeling very little sense of being “rested”. My dreams disturbed me. My wakefulness, whether caused by noisy neighbors lacking any sense how loud their car stereo sounds at 1:22 am, or the persistent whine of a freight train paused on the siding on the other side of the park, or the contents of my own dreams, rendered the night more or less pointless from the perspective of resting. I woke in pain, too, as stiff as a tiny wooden artist’s figure, new from the box. My head aches.

Beyond the patio, the meadow and marsh are hidden by a dense mist that suggests something mysterious, even sinister, beyond. It’s unlikely there’s anything legitimately amiss anywhere out there in the park besides litter left carelessly behind, and walkways covered in ice where there would usually be a puddle. The mist itself doesn’t seem at all sinister or hazardous, it’s just a mist, a foggy morning, a new day… but the obscured view puts my imagination into overdrive making something of nothing. I startle myself with my own reflection twice, from across the room, thinking someone is looking in at me from fairly nearby. The power of my imagination increases when I am not well-rested, and I am less well-defended against misinformation, influence, or deception. (Is that what happened, America? Where we all just that damned sleep-deprived?)

As the sky continues to lighten, I see that it snowed a bit more during the night; the meadow and the patio furniture are dusted with it. With daylight, the meadow mist is more distinct, and a firmer boundary between what is obvious, and what is accepted but unseen, a gray backdrop not yet painted with scenery. I watch the morning in the park develop like a Polaroid.

If we take time to see it, the view is continuously changing.

The view is continuously changing. We don’t always notice.

Today is a good day to take care of the woman in the mirror, and this fragile vessel, and to be mindful that lacking the rest I need, my awareness and thinking may be colored or distorted in unpredictable ways. Today is a good day to check assumptions, confirm expectations, and take my time, mindful of the weather – and aware that weather changes. Today is a good day to approach every interaction with consideration; I am not the only person who didn’t sleep well last night, who hurts, or feels headache-y. We are each having our own experience. Today is a good day to make the choices that make it a good one. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Some Mornings Less So

May 8, 2016 //
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Most mornings proceed pretty gently for me these days, and even on the worst of them I get by pretty well, and treat myself decently, and with considerable compassion. This morning was less than usually gentle, and although I’ve done what I can, I am less than ideally kind to myself – I am frustrated by my limitations and feeling irked. It’s not the best addition to my morning coffee, which somehow tastes bitter in spite of using the same coffee I find so richly satisfying most other mornings – and in spite of my general lack of ability to detect bitter flavors in the first place. It is one more defining detail of the start of my day.

I woke from a sound sleep, head as stuffy as the room also felt, throat dry, head pounding, and the clock factually admonishing me that it was already 5:30 am, well into the ‘I may as well get up’ time of morning [for me]. I definitely did not want to get up, and I felt groggy and out of sorts. I got up to pee, and opened the patio door to the morning breeze, hoping to cool the apartment down without fully waking up, and noticing my pain well beyond the usual as I did so. (That makes it sound far more efficient than my hapless dizzy clumsy careening around the room actually was.) I took my morning medication, drank a glass of water, and returned to bed, hoping to sleep in spite of the pain. That doesn’t always work out for me, particularly after sunrise, but on this gray overcast moody looking morning, and after considerable tossing and turning trying to find some combination of pillows and posture that would allow it, I slept.

I woke later to a cool room filled with fresh morning air, headache gone, and easily able to breathe. I feel rested. I still hurt. I am in more pain than usual, possibly just the ordinary change in my arthritis pain that comes with a change in the weather. Yesterday, sunny, warm, and clear… today, gray, overcast, cool, and threatening rain – it’s very much the sort of change that comes with more than usual pain, and I feel less cross with myself recognizing that. (At 5:30 am it was less obvious that it would be a cloudy day.) My coffee is still pretty dreadful… and I give some moments of thought to whether it makes more sense to pour it out and make another cup, or just drink it and have a better second cup later? I get up to go pour it out and start over… then remember I am currently getting by on limited income. Shit. I sit down, taking a more practical, frugal approach, and sip my coffee as it is… glaring down into the dark brew now and then, wondering what the hell went wrong with my process this morning to get this result?

Still… pain and a bad cup of coffee isn’t the whole of my day, or of my experience – it’s not even the whole of my morning. I’m barely awake yet, and the day stretches ahead well beyond my ‘now’, unformed, unlived, and largely unimagined. There will be verbs involved, and choices. 🙂 I sip my coffee and wonder whether or not ‘taking care of me’ today is more about yielding to the pain I am in and compromising my loose plans for greater comfort… or refusing to let my pain call the shots, and undertaking the things I am inclined to do, more slowly perhaps and less comfortably, and just understand that the pain is what it is, and it’s part of my experience more often than I’d like… It’s a hard call this morning. If it actually hurt less to just go back to bed and stay there… I probably would. It doesn’t, so that’s not even an option. lol

That’s a funny thing about the vast menu of choices life presents me with, that I don’t consider as frankly as I might, as often as would be helpful… there are some things I want very much to be choices of mine, that are not in fact on my own actual [still vast] menu of choices to consider – when I am honest with myself. I can’t really choose not to be in pain with my arthritis in any realistic way. I can’t choose to be younger. I can’t choose to change the past. I can’t choose to begin somewhere over there, when I am standing right here. I can’t choose for any of the many details of reality to be other than they are – although I can choose to ignore them, or pretend them differently, the consequences of my actions remain tied to the real reality, and the true truth. Reality does not care what lies we tell ourselves. Our truths have very little to do with what we say in words.

So… this morning… pain. I still want to go to the farmers’ market this morning. When I go, some later, I will still have to be mindful that my resources have changed a lot, and being frugal has value – this is a poor time to be careless or wasteful with resources. I will need to slow down a bit, and manage my pain – or my pain will take the driver’s seat and manage my mood. Choices. Always choices. It’s worthwhile to take a few minutes over my coffee to consider what my choices really are – and where they lead me.

I decide on a hearty breakfast at home, accepting as a given that shopping when I am hungry may drive unintended spending. Before breakfast, a walk and yoga. A second cup of coffee. A hot shower. I notice in this one moment, right here, now, I am not actually in pain… I don’t question that, and I do pause everything else (writing, coffee, gazing at the bird feeder beyond the window…) and take some time to be aware that I am not hurting, to savor it, to linger over the sensations of feeling good; doing so is a practice that shifts my implicit memory away from ‘being in pain all the time’ to being aware that I am not always in pain, and improving my day-to-day perspective and sense of my experience. Moment by moment I build my day… the difficult start? Just one moment of many to come, and I let it go. 🙂

Neither a single ocean wave nor one small bird defines a day at the beach.

Neither a single ocean wave nor one small bird defines a day at the beach.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, The Art of Being, Words

Managing Pain

January 17, 2016 //
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I woke up in pain this morning, more pain than most mornings, and particularly more so than recent mornings.  A morning with an unusual amount of pain kicks over some self-care dominoes pretty quickly, and I found myself clumsy, slow, and emotional before I’d even finished my first coffee.

Clumsy with pain, and not my best cup of coffee. One morning, one moment, of many.

Clumsy with pain, and not my best cup of coffee. One morning, one moment, of many.

I’m okay, really. At this point, I am struggling more with the un-eased stiffness of my arthritic spine than with the pain itself. Coffee #2 is quite excellent, and I’m finding a bit of yogurt with some oats and dried fruit mixed in quite satisfying for a late bite of breakfast. The morning is a good one, pleasantly relaxed and without stress…aside from the pain, the stiffness, and the coming and going of emotions associated with those experiences. I am in enough pain to evoke tears, each time the pain resurfaces. The stiffness of my joints makes me ‘feel old’ more than the pain itself does, but the pain is what moves me to tears. Now and then I contemplate just going back to bed, although it was likely some characteristic of how I was sleeping that finds me here this morning. I feel frustrated and annoyed.

I checked in with my traveling partner online between coffees. I miss him greatly, and we had discussed hanging out today. I am a lot less fun when I hurt this much. I feel the frustration in the background, and a yearning to ‘force myself’ through ‘whatever it takes’ to ease my pain – not because I hurt, but because I want so much to hang out with my traveling partner and enjoy that time together wholly undistracted by pain. Punishing myself because I am trapped in this fragile vessel, limited by mortal limitations, isn’t really a good way to treat myself – or to get the results I’d like, either, and tends to put me in a bad mood over time. I stop myself long enough to recognize that I am doing my best, and remind myself that it is enough.

I put myself on pause to meditate. I take time to do some yoga. Both these things offer some measure of relief of both the pain, and the emotionality. I sit quietly, and enjoy my coffee while watching the rain fall just beyond the patio door. I’m okay right now. Pain is what it is, and I am dealing with that today, but what I’m not having to deal with is treating myself poorly for a condition in life that is not worthy of blame, or punishment. I’ll enjoy the day, in spite of the pain I am in – because it isn’t the pain that determines the quality of my experience, it’s just something I have to deal with.

I take some good deep breaths, sip my coffee, and pay attention to my posture as I write; it is an easy enough bit of mindfulness to bring to my experience and relieves considerable discomfort. I lose sight of it repeatedly and, as with any bit of mindfulness, that’s to be expected. I begin again. And yet again. I keep practicing. Over time, I relax more comfortably with better posture, slowly encouraging muscles that may not have been doing their part to become stronger and more involved. Incremental change over time is a powerful thing. With the yoga too, postures that were too difficult upon waking are now within reach, and later today I will achieve others that offer still more relief. The toughest of the practices on a morning like this one is simply being patient with myself, and giving myself the time and consideration to get results more slowly than I might on another day.

I smile thinking of my traveling partner, and hope that his morning is going well, and that his coffee is excellent, also. Today is a good day to smile, and enjoy what each moment offers; the moments themselves are so few in a mortal lifetime. Today is a good day to appreciate what is working out well, and any improvements that develop over time. Today is a good day to appreciate the woman in the mirror and to treat myself well, rather than criticizing my best efforts on a difficult day. Today is a good day to enjoy my coffee and listen to the rain fall. It’s enough.

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Love, medical marijuana, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words
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