Archives for posts with tag: arthritis pain
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A Change of Perspective

September 28, 2015 //
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I am a fan of explicit expectation setting. I am also a person who struggles with some sorts of unexpected changes – maybe you are too? With both those things in mind, I figured I would make a point of saying that I will be shifting my writing from early mornings to late evenings; I’d like to take more time in the mornings to meditate, and start the day slowly, and with summer becoming autumn, and winter not so far off at this point, pain management will be enhanced by doing (more) yoga in the mornings, too.

Change isn’t so bad; I enjoy a change of perspective now and then, and I find evenings and mornings fill my thoughts quite differently. When I started this blog, I often wrote in the evenings. At that time it was a less-than-ideal fit for the needs of others in the household. Mornings were ‘easier’. That’s no longer a significant consideration and for some time to come I expect I will need a bit more in the way of self-care, just to manage my physical pain as the season changes.

I am hopeful the change in timing will be comfortable all around…this post will be waiting for you tomorrow morning, as if I wrote it at the usual time, and I will sit down to write after work tomorrow evening – perhaps with my head in a very different place, open to other ideas, and different ways of viewing life and the world than what mornings have tended to reveal?

A change of season, a change in routine, a change in perspective.

A change of season, a change in routine, a change in perspective.

Today is a good day for change, and a good day to take care of me. 🙂

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Bitch, Don’t Start With Me…

July 28, 2015 //
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I woke ahead of the alarm, and almost immediately my thoughts turned in a dark direction, filling with negativity, doubt, imagined hurts – all in the seconds after waking, before my broken brain really has a chance to boot up and fight the demons in the darkness. With a sigh I flip on the light – and reach for the alarm clock. No way to I want to hear it go off – my internal alarm bells were already clanging away.

I took my morning medication and went straight for the music – “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” for openers, first thing, and loud enough to hear in the shower. In this case, the ‘bitch’ in question is the woman in the mirror – and I sing along, right to her face, all through my shower and getting dressed for the day. Seriously? Acknowledging the power of my own freedom to choose, and the potential it has to color my experience, means on a morning when my own brain attempts a sneak attack – it’s totally okay to call me on my bullshit, myself. By the time my coffee is ready, I expect to be past the difficult waking moment, without using up the emotional reserves necessary to deep dive the chaos and damage; it’s enough to recognize that I have more than my share, and understand that it can make for some challenges now and then. (At least, that’s definitely enough at 4:30 am on a work morning, before I am even completely awake!)

By the time my coffee is ready – I’ve recovered my now-utterly-routine peaceful leisurely morning. I celebrate with my favorite bounce back anthem. Dancing from the kitchen with my coffee, singing along as I cross the room with a wink and a smile at the woman in the mirror – that crazy bitch knows I am not taking her bullshit today! lol [Reminder: there are no literal voices in my head, and I am just this one person right here – but I do find it handy to face the woman in the mirror on terms that allow me to communicate more easily with myself across the chasm of this injury and the vast piles of chaos and damage left behind from other experiences with other people.]

It’s a morning for music, I guess. I am moved.  Listening to “Love Sex Magic” when it comes up in the playlist, I grin and feel the residual heat and fervor of my love for my traveling partner…and on some other level, my pure delight and animal enthusiasm for healthy adult play, generally. Few things chase the demons back into the darkness like a really good playlist. 🙂

Aside from the complicated moments immediately after waking, it’s a lovely morning. My coffee is tasty, smooth, hot – and I managed it without spilling boiling water on the counter when I moistened the filter, or getting dust from ground coffee all over the floor – I often do both. It’s okay; I’m learning not to take my own humanity personally, or treat small such ‘mistakes’ as any reflection on my worth as a human being, a partner, a lover, artist, writer, or woman – hell, it’s not even “about” having a brain injury. Every human, everywhere, has moments of clumsiness, makes mistakes, causes a mess by mistake, or falls short of their own vision of who they can be on some occasion. Perfect? It’s not a thing in real life. I’m over that. I haven’t lost anything but some needless heartache to let go of emotionally brutalizing myself over ever action or outcome that could be viewed as a mistake – and with good reason, frankly; too many of them turn out to be, if not utterly necessary in some unanticipated fashion, just not a big deal at all, and definitely unworthy of the drama, turmoil, and hurt. I figure, over time, continuing to treat myself well in this fashion will also result in having the reaction, itself, come up far less often. That tends to be how incremental change over time works out.

My arthritis is hurting a lot this week. Dancing helps – hurts, but it does help, and the easiest way to overcome the inertia of pain is to find movement irresistible – that’s dance, right there, isn’t it?  Turning on the music this morning was a good call for my body, as well as my heart and mind. My playlist is mostly dance tracks, hip hop, crunk, and couple of other favorites that ‘don’t really belong here’ (Santana, Billy Idol, Skrillex) … only… this is my playlist, and they do ‘belong’. How much easier would so much of life be with practices that made the practicing itself irresistible? There’s often a real thrill or moment of gratification associated with experiences in life that present the greatest risks of negative outcome… sex… money… rage… That’s more than a little bit inconvenient for a woman with a dis-inhibiting brain injury, trust me. I’m glad I can yield to the urge to dance without concern for adverse consequences. 🙂

A summer day, a journey that continues.

A summer day, a journey that continues.

The point this morning, as much as anything, is that I am often in my own way more than anything else is. Injuries do happen. Pain is part of the human experience. The constant struggling is a choice. Learning to make my choices differently is a process. Today is a good day to practice the practices that are working best for me. It’s a good day to remind the woman in the mirror I won’t be taking her shit, either; we need each other, but I won’t be allowing her chaos and damage to call the shots, when I can avoid it with other choices. Today is a good day to enjoy the journey.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Simple Pleasures

July 27, 2015 //
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This morning my arthritis pain is…well, it is. But it isn’t as much so as yesterday, and the improvement is the foundation on which my smile is built, this morning. My coffee is hot and tasty, and the morning is chilly – this seems a pleasant combination, and tends to reinforce the smile. On my way to make coffee, I spotted my rather shy clown pleco (Panaqolus maccus) scooting out of view and I grin from ear to ear to have seen him at all. He has his favorite hiding spots and generally only ‘comes out’ when he’s pretty sure no one is watching.

The only picture I've gotten of my clown pleco since I moved.

The only picture I’ve gotten of my clown pleco since I moved.

So far, a basically pleasant morning, filled with small things to smile about, and some arthritis pain. I start to think ‘not bad for a Monday’ and catch myself rolling my eyes rather dismissively; there’s nothing ‘wrong with’ Mondays – and setting those expectations, even in a back-handed way, is no way to treat myself, particularly on an actual Monday. I find my thoughts wandering to ‘how did we find our way to a place where Mondays are given such a poor reputation?’ We can get pretty worked up about how shitty Monday’s might be (or tend to be, or seem to tend to be, or are rumored to seem to tend to be), but in practice, are Mondays actually any worse than any other days? Maybe Mondays are worse for people coming off a weekend bender and having to drag themselves through an ugly commute into the office to commit acts of servitude in corporate purgatory…but even that…I feel kinda bad for poor Monday having to listen to people talk shit on her all the time. Pretty good that she’s not a person.

This particular Monday seems to be starting well, at least for me. I am not reading the news – even the articles linked by friends on Facebook get no attention from me this morning. They’ll be there on Tuesday, no doubt. I am enjoying my coffee, my yoga, my meditation, my writing. I am enjoying an email from a dear friend. I am enjoying a pedicure, and a foot rub – oh sure, I know as well as anyone else that a foot rub I give myself doesn’t feel ‘as good’ as a foot rub given to me by someone else…but living alone doesn’t mean I simply go without everything that feels good. lol. That would suck, wouldn’t it? (I assure you, a foot rub I give myself still feels pretty damned good.) I woke a little ahead of the alarm this morning, and feeling well-rested, I got up. There’s more time in my morning, and on a Monday I suppose I could go to work early…but damn, what does the job ever do for me that I didn’t straight up earn in the first place? Nothing. I do verbs of a variety of sorts, for a variety of purposes and persons, all the time, and certainly I am worthy of investing in my own needs and pleasure on a Monday morning; the job will still be there at the usual time. I choose to put my time and my effort where it will be most appreciated this morning – in myself, and meeting my own needs.

The sun rises noticeably later each Monday. It is still summer, but this morning is not a hot one, and I am pleased to wear something less…sleeveless, for a change. The morning is comfortably cool. I smile, noticing the time; it’s only now the time I usually wake up, a leisurely Monday morning, indeed – with plenty of smiles.

I spent much of the weekend, in spite of pain, puttering around the apartment continuing to ‘move in’ – smaller tasks, now, but the details are part of what makes this place “home” for me. In the rush of having to move ahead of schedule (my safety is more important than financial concerns, honestly), details that I would have handled quite differently got…’managed’ hastily and without much forethought: paperwork stuffed into drawers, unrelated items packed into boxes that were not well-labeled, and on moving in some cupboards were stuffed with things that “don’t really go there”, just to reduce visual clutter enough to create a sense of order, and momentum to continue unpacking.  I love creating order from chaos. I love the sorting process of figuring out where things most ideally go for both storage and use. I love creating this space that “feels like I live here”. The small details of moving in delight me – my comfort, built on my choices. It’s lovely to have this autonomy after so many years of conversations resulting in me compromising what works for me so that someone else can have what works for them. I guess that sounds pretty selfish… for now I am okay with that. I have lived a lot of years making do in living arrangements not well-suited to the issues I have, or set up such that daily life is an impediment to therapy, or rehabilitating this injury. I’m overdue to enjoy things “my way” for a while. (First, I’ve had to figure out what that is…) 🙂

Monday? It’s a good day to spend time with the woman in the mirror. It’s a good day to take a ‘no compromise’ approach to treating myself well. It’s a good day for simple pleasures, and for bringing a smile into the office – and into the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

An Eye-Opening Moment

July 19, 2015 //
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Life is rich with eye-opening moments. Some of them are heart-breaking (like the moment I realized I was only a resource to someone I thought loved me, many years ago). Other eye-opening moments are simply moments of greater awareness than the moments that preceded. A few are literally moments at that point at which I open my eyes – like this morning, when I woke, opened my eyes, and found as my initial eye-opening experience that I am in tremendous physical pain this morning. My arthritis. It’s not a crisis of any magnitude, and there’s not much to be done about it that would be new, or particularly noteworthy; I take my pain medication, and I head for my yoga mat. After my morning coffee, I will soak in a hot bath and hope that the saturating heat will ease my pain and stiffness further.

My arthritis is in my spine. I rarely think much about how I rely on my spine until I find myself mostly unable to make use of it in any sort of flexible way. This morning getting out of bed was complicated by both the stiffness and the pain. I rolled off the side of the bed, letting my legs drop to the floor, and leaning on the wall to slowly stand. Sitting and standing maneuvers are difficult today, even after yoga eased some of the stiffness.

The pain is another matter. Even after easing some of the stiffness in my spine, I am hurting too much to find joy in the day, so far, which makes me cross. I reach out to my traveling partner and cancel plans to hang out. I am in no mood to be in the company of others, and for the time being, all I can think about is the pain. While that may change as I practice good self-care practices, I can’t really rely on being able to hold on to a pleasant demeanor long enough to be certain of treating others well. Solitude is a good choice when I am in this much pain. I don’t mind the solitude – and I definitely dislike finding that I have treated my traveling partner poorly over something as trivial (and commonplace) as pain. It was an easy choice to make, and my traveling partner does not complicate such things with manipulation, tantrums or drama; he appreciates being treated well.

Summer flowers are everywhere; I only see them when I look. Awareness matters.

Summer flowers are everywhere; I only see them when I look. Awareness matters.

The weather forecast is for a hot day. I take a moment to appreciate the existence of air-conditioning, sip my coffee, and pretend to plan my day in some way that isn’t centered on the pain I am in – but I keep finding myself accounting for the pain in a very frank way as I figure out what I want to do with this day – I keep having to remind myself that some of the things I might like to do are going to be damned difficult if I can’t bend, reach, lift, carry, get down on the floor and back up, sit in one place, or generally move with any ease. I am irritated to be stalled by pain. I remind myself to be kind to myself; this fragile vessel can only do so much on a day like this, and there’s nothing lazy about that.

I sip my coffee indifferently, contemplating just going back to bed…but that won’t work either; it was the pain of being in bed that woke me, earlier. I frown at myself for a moment; I am not making taking care of me easy, at all. I pause and put the focus on the good qualities of the day, the pleasant features of this moment, just beyond the pain…

Clematis on a summer morning is lovely even when I hurt.

Clematis on a summer morning is lovely even when I hurt.

…It’s a lovely morning, in spite of the promised heat of the day. The early morning sunlight is clear and bright, and filters through the blinds casting interesting stripe-y shadows that I enjoy greatly. The coffee I have been sipping with such disregard is quite delightful – a darker roast than I have been drinking (I tend to prefer darker roasts, myself). I am enjoying the warmth of the mug in my hands when I pause to take a sip.  (I nearly always finish my coffee in sips, consuming it well before it cools off, most days.) The a/c kept the apartment quite comfortable through the night, and I slept well and deeply, and woke feeling alert and clear-headed. Most of the housework on my ‘to do list’ for a Sunday can be done with relative ease, even when I am hurting, and occupying my time in that fashion will quite likely take my mind off the pain for a time. I have a couple new books to read, and it looks like a great day for that, too. I can choose from  Pablo Naruda‘s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”, Thich Nhat Hanh‘s “Anger”, or Naomi Wolf‘s “Vagina”. Taking breaks between chapters to do yoga will help ease my pain and stiffness if I find myself sitting too long.

It’s admittedly easier to focus on the pain; it shouts at me within my consciousness in a way that the pleasant details of the morning simply don’t compete with easily. It is worthwhile to patiently choose to be aware of more. Like so many practices, it does take practice, and there are verbs involved. My results vary. 🙂

The heavy scent of summer jasmine reminds me of my childhood home. I wonder why I haven't gotten a potted one for my patio yet?

The heavy scent of summer jasmine reminds me of my childhood home. I wonder why I haven’t gotten a potted one for my patio yet?

Today is a good day to practice exceptional self-care, and to treat myself well. Today is a good day to make choices that result in not treating others badly. Today is a good day for good choices, good practices, and an awareness that there is life beyond pain. Today is a good day to enjoy everyday moments of delight, and to practice self-compassion. This fragile vessel can only do so much, and there is no rush to complete living as though it were on my task list; the journey is the destination.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Uncategorized, Words

Who Ordered This??

July 7, 2015 //
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This morning I woke in pain; my arthritis has flared up after many days of not bothering me much at all. The hot dry days offer relief…but…it’s still hot. It’s still dry. I am in pain. I slowly rose, patient with the stiffness of my spine. This is a morning for music and dance, cool breezes be damned. I peer through the patio blinds and notice with some surprise that already the days are shortening and dawn is coming later…did I wake ahead of the alarm? I double-check. It went off. It woke me. I no longer remember hearing it. Pain is a distraction.

I start the day with Usher, and coffee. Facebook tells me my computer is infected with malware. I glare at the page with skepticism and irritation. Why is Facebook telling me what to do? I log out with a promise to myself to let my traveling partner know; I trust him, and his skills, more than any app or browser warning. Hell – the warning probably is the malware, requesting permission to get started. For the moment I find myself in contemplation of all that is unclean and vile about the internet, and my head aches with the weight of the suspicion, and distrust. The pain, again, is a distraction.

I reach for my coffee, and burn my tongue, then spill it in my lap for the added delight of hot coffee held to tender flesh by coffee soaked jeans. Seriously? Who the hell ordered this day? I snarl at myself, managing to knock over my chair as I get up, too quickly, to change clothes. The chair falls on my foot. Great. The top I wanted to wear doesn’t go with the pair of jeans I just put on. The top I’d wear instead is in the laundry. I break a nail reaching for an acceptable alternative. Are you fucking kidding me? What is up with today?

Pain is no joke. The unexpected return of significant arthritis pain this morning easily throws me off, which would be, perhaps, just a little amusing in the face of words like ‘chronic’ and ‘long-term’ – if I were in any mood whatever to laugh about it. Right now I just hurt. I hurt and I’m sort of mad at the day right now. Don’t say it. I know what works. There are practices to practice and it’s time for that. I get it. Pardon me while I take a few minutes to take care of me.

Yes, yes. I know.

Yes, yes. I know.

1. I took my medication on time, and it’ll take another 30-40 minutes to be fully effective. It only addresses the symptom: pain. There is more to do to put the day back on track.

2. Medical cannabis helps by potentiating the Rx pain reliever – and it will take the edge off my quickly deteriorating mood, and wipe the snarl off my face promptly…and make yoga easier.

3. Putting the rest of the morning aside, yoga is next, and I take my time with a long sequence of postures that lengthen and gently flex my spine, easing the pain where the pain lives. The headache begins to diminish.

4. Then, meditation – this is an Rx that goes straight to the brain, literally, and is a first/last/always step for me these days…although, sometimes, like a child resisting bedtime I fight the necessity irritably for no good reason.

5. Coffee. I take my time making a really first-rate cup of coffee for myself, and sit down to enjoy it, feeling very much that the morning has been ‘reset’.

It is once again a morning filled with music and I am smiling and sipping my coffee as contentedly as if I woke up on an entirely different morning. Choices, verbs, patience and self-compassion, and the willingness to accept that the potential to improve a poor experience exists…and practicing practices for the win. 🙂

Enjoying other moments.

Enjoying other moments.

The morning moves on, time passes, I sit quietly enjoying pictures of a walk with the wanderer after work, yesterday. If I spend more time thinking about the rough start to the morning, lingering on uncomfortable sensations, unpleasant emotions, or the difficulties themselves, than I do savoring the delights of other moments with similar depth and clarity, over time my negative bias will increase, and my ‘background experience’ will become more negative as well. I take this understanding very seriously, and commit to enjoying my coffee and thinking about the evening behind me. I linger over the recollection of finally taking a photograph of a dragonfly.

He's there, really. (I have no idea why I like dragonflies so very much, but I do.)

He’s there, really. (I have no idea why I like dragonflies so very much, but I do.)

I think, too, about the later conversation with my traveling partner, and the feeling of connection and warmth in spite of the physical distance. That takes my thoughts all sorts of lovely places, thinking about love, Love, and loving. At this point there is no hint of the morning’s challenges remaining in my experience of the moment, and I find myself ready to move on with the day.

Am I achieving emotional self-sufficiency? Do I need to ask this question now? Living the experience is, perhaps, enough.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Today is a good day for practicing practices, using verbs, and having my own experience – if it’s mine, I can change it. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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