8 - 11/12/2009 - My Little "Twinge"

Greetings,

Disguising and understating pain is something which I seem to have a true talent for. I mentioned on Facebook at one point in time that I was not feeling well and had a bit of a "twinge" of pain to deal with. Now, while it was somewhat the truth, the actual situation is something a little different. In essence, this is something like a "bad day" for me.

Where to start? Well I suppose at the beginning would be the most obvious. I woke up with some constriction across my chest. The muscles were aching quite a bit. I thought it was nothing so decided that I just needed to do a bit of deep breathing and it would all be good. I breathed deeply and instantly got sharp stabbing pains on both sides of my sternum, not a good start. Things with regard to my chest would only get worse for a while.

Along with the breathing issues associated with my chest, I also noticed a distinct lack of movement without pain. Anything that involved rapid or large amounts of movement of my arms was not good and caused me pain. This was not good and was actually the longest lasting aspect of the chest pain. The breathing eventually got easier and the pain lessened eventually taking deep breaths, but rapid movement was still a problem.

The next on the list was my left shoulder. This actually stiffened up quite a bit not long after the limiting aspect movement across the chest had lessened, which is about right for me. This was mainly stiffness on my left side a limited movement again. The chest area around the left shoulder was a little sore but nothing like my chest before.

Just to add a little more on to this situation, my left leg around the hip decided it would play up as well. This happened at the same time as my chest and continued with the shoulder issue. This was a sharp stabbing pain into the hip joint, but was more toward the spine, sound familiar? Yes, you guessed it sciatic pain. So at least I could nail it down to one nerve cluster. This would result in movement issues due to pain mainly, and as with any nerve issue it spread down the leg to my ankle. This of course made things rather difficult for quite a period of time.

So the question that comes to mind is how I dealt with this particular situation. Well medication is always helpful to a degree. In my case it was three different types of pain-killers all at once, but as anyone who knows me at all, this only came after I could not ignore the situation anymore. I tend to only resort to pain-killers once every other avenue has been exhausted. I don't tend to like to take pain-killers for several reasons, the two big ones being not wanting a dependence on them and the other being the amount required to actually do any good.

Pure ignorance and denial of the pain is one of the most basic, but tends to be the least effective of all of them. Distraction therapy is always much more successful. Getting involved in doing something to take my mind off the pain works much better. I altered what I was doing during the day somewhat, but not all that much. Stubbornness seems to be one of the key aspects which keeps me going during times like this. In many ways it is the stubbornness and distraction therapy which does the prime job and the painkillers are more of an assistance.

Well, that's about it. This is what one of my "bad days" is like. On a scale this situation, while it lasted for a couple of days actually rates pretty average to below average for one of my real "bad days". The get worse than this and sometimes, much worse than this. I don't tend to like to focus on this sort of thing as it depresses me, but it is just the way it is. I always look forward to what tomorrow will bring, no point in letting the issues and pain beat you, that takes all the fun away.

Cheers,

Henry.