I Really Hate That Guy

I really hate that guy...

He smiles when he is in pain and tells everyone he is, "Fine" or "OK". He is polite to people when he would rather be elsewhere and puts a smile and tries to enjoy himself. He is also polite to people just because it benefits other people, because he does not want to upset those people or cause a problem for those people around him. He keeps his mouth shut when there are times when I would have told people off in some of the strongest language. He does not tell so much that he could. He stays around when he knows it would be so much easier to walk away. He wears the right clothes at the right times, trying to play just another person among the other people.

That is the guy I put on to cover what hides beneath. Sometimes, I really hate that guy, but he can be really useful as well.

Cheers,

Henry.

Pain to Power

Greetings,

I know it has been quite a while since I have put anything on this blog, I have been having a lack of inspiration for anything of relevance to write. My fencing blog (afencersramblings.blogspot.com.au) seems to be so much easier to write for some reason. I am guessing that this one is personal and I do not know exactly how much of my personal stuff people want to hear about. I am really not the sort of person who likes to sit around complaining about stuff. I write here to inform and to give others ideas about how to deal with things in their own lives. So on to the subject of the current post before I get too side-tracked...

The purpose of this post is to look at how we can turn our pain into power. No, I am not talking about working a generator, I am talking about using it to motivate and to make us do more rather than withdraw into our shells as we often want to. This may seem very strange to some, as soon as the pain starts they stop because it hurts and therefore the concept that the pain can make them powerful is going to be rather alien to them. Obviously for me, not so much.

"Work through the pain." How many times have you heard this statement? It is often proposed by gym-junkies and the like when they are exercising. They are talking about pain which is developed by fatigue or a "stitch". This is not the sort of pain that people with fibromyalgia (FM) and similar conditions are familiar with. For them it is nerve pain, much more painful, and often longer lasting.

Step 1: Choosing

The first part of turning your pain into power is that when the pain strikes you have two choices. No, actually you really do. You can stop what you are doing, or you can continue. If what you are doing is not particularly pleasurable or you are not particularly motivated to doing it then stopping and saving your energy is probably the best option. Save your energy for battles you want to pick. If you are doing something that you want to be doing or is pleasurable to you and you are motivated to do, then not stopping is probably an option. You have to choose not to stop.

Step 2: Energy

The next bit is having a look how much energy resisting is going to take and how much you have in reserve. Time to "count the spoons" as some would put it. Resisting the pain and continuing is going to take energy, and in some instances it is going to take quite a bit of it. The questions you have to ask yourself are: Do you have this energy? Are you willing to spend it? Are you willing to put up with the consequences of spending it? Is the outcome going to be worth it? The last question is actually the most important as far as I am concerned, the rest are not so important, but that is me.

Step 3: Spending the Energy

Out of all of the steps this is the hard bit and takes the real determination. This is the bit where most people will feel that they have failed, or will quit trying and so forth. This is the bit where you stare the pain down and tell it who's boss. This is the bit where you look it in the eye and tell it that you are going to continue what you are doing until you want to stop, not until it wants to stop you. This is going to take determination and energy to keep going. Most importantly believe that you can do it and do it.

Step 4: Downtime

After any energy expenditure you need some downtime. This will allow you to recharge the batteries a little. At this point in time you should not be thinking about how you went, only about resting and recharging. To tell you the truth, this is the bit that I have the hardest time with, I always feel that I should be doing something. Most of the time for me it is "crash"-time rather than downtime, and I do not recommend it. Take time to rest instead.

Step 5: Evaluation and Preparation

After you have had some time to recharge your batteries you need to have a look at how you did. A responsible person always evaluates what they have done and learns from it. Most importantly, this is personal evaluation. You do not need to, nor should you, compare your successes with anyone else. Please notice that I have not mentioned the word "failure". If you did a little bit more than you would have done because you chose to. You have a success. The successes do not have to be big, the just have to be present. Find out what you can do differently next time to improve your situation so that you can do better. The next part is preparation and preparing to make the same choice again, because it will come around again, and you have to be willing to make the same choice again. The more you do it, the more motivated you will become and the more powerful you will become. Hence pain to power.

If you are reading this and think that this is an easy sort of thing to do, you are kidding yourself. It is even more difficult if you are not prone to resisting the pain and letting it have its way. The method I am proposing here is hard, and it takes time, but it is about standing up and taking power over the pain rather than letting it have all the power. No, I am not saying that you should ditch all your medications, that's crazy, but the power of your own motivation can help a hell of a lot.

I am proposing a method that works for me. Now be warned I am a stubborn sod, any one of my two siblings will tell you this, as will many of my friends. I hate being confined by things. Most of all I hate being confined by my conditions, thus I fight against them. Now a lot of the time this can land me in some hot water, you will not posts about me talking about "crashes". This is because I push the method that I am proposing to the extreme and then suffer the consequences. What I am proposing for you is to use it in a much more measured fashion. Have a go, what's the damage it can do to try?

Cheers,

Henry.

A Victory at Last... Physiotherapy really works.

Greetings,

Yes, you read it right, I have a victory at last. My regular readers would have read about the problems that I have been having with my knees being quite painful for quite some time. They would have also read about the awful threat and actual happening of me having to use my walking cane for a period of time. Well, I can finally report a victory on that front.

Some months ago, March by my accounting, I managed to get into see the Allied Health Department at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane for an assessment on my knees. After the assessment they decided that they would trial me on three months of physiotherapy to see if that would help before going to send me to see the orthopedic surgeon to see what surgical options there were. I liked this idea as the idea of them cutting open my knees was not my idea of fun as it involved weeks of being off my feet.

Off I went to the Physiotherapy Department. Horribly helpful people, obviously not well-informed about all of my conditions. Sure they got told about my fibromyalgia, but not about the hyper-mobility and the marfans syndrome. These can make some of the exercises a little interesting and also some of the stresses on joints a little interesting. Once these were dealt with things got started.

My physiotherapist Anne was great. Rather than going straight for the knees she started with my posture and looked at my feet. Seems my feet were rolling inward resulting in my knees doing a similar thing, more stress on them, so we started there. My feet have mostly been good aside from the occasional dislocated/bruised toe, forming bunions, long feet and long toe issues. First we did some exercises to convince my feet to start "standing up" and rolling out. This also did a bit of work on my ankles as well, not a bad thing. Some taping was involved which worked a treat.

Result, I now have orthotics in my regular walking shoes to keep my feet in the right place. This helped a bit with taking some pressure off my knees. Next bit, as a part of this was gaining some control over the muscles around my ankles and the joints themselves. Also stretches were involved of various muscle groups in the legs. Ask my fencing students, some of them are now being subjected to them.

With the feet and ankles on the mend the knees were next. This is where the real work started. Lots of exercises lots of repetition and lots of posture correction. If you are a fencer, and your teacher says "Get your knee turned out." Just do it. It will save you a lot of time and effort later on. So now I have a bunch of exercises to work on groups of muscles and also stretches to also keep them nice and limber. They were horribly tight previously, I never noticed how much.

The end result of all this is. When you go to the physiotherapist and they give you exercises to do. Do them. They do work. They will help. I was discharged from the Mater Physiotherapy Department today. Aside from the usual fibromyalgia annoyances which I have to put up with anyway my knees have never felt better. I will be keeping up with the exercises and stretches because I do not want them to go back to where they were.

Cheers,

Henry.
  

You Know You Have Chronic Pain When... (Part 3)

Greetings,

It has been a while. This is the continuation of my list from the last part, which I started a while ago. You can read the first part here: http://alifewithfibromyalgia.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/you-know-you-have-chronic-pain-when.html and the second part not too far further along.

16) Your partner gauges how much pain you are in on the basis of how many things you have threatened to destroy, how many people you have threatened to kill recently, and whether this is above "normal".
17) The difference between a nervous tic and an indication of pain is usually the intensity.
18) When you take pain medication and the pain actually goes away it feels "wrong".
19) Sometimes it is just a question of what is going to hurt the most in the end.
20) Other times it is a question of what is going to hurt the least in the end.

Well, that's 20. I suppose I should do a "list so far", which I may do at some point in time. If I think of any more once again, I will add them here again in batches of five.

Cheers,

Henry.

Politics... Grab the Money and Run

Greetings,

RANT WARNING!
Please excuse me as I let off some steam about Australian politics and politics in general. This will have some relation to disability services in my country and may serve as a lesson to others.

Politics in Australia seems to be at the moment, grab the money and run. Or to be more exact, pay-off our fat-cat friends, rip the money from the most undefended of the country, and then when we get removed, let the country pay for our life-styles in retirement. I do not know exact figures but I am going to estimate that millions, if not billions, of dollars have been paid to media magnates, and mining moguls, while the normal Australian is told to tighten their belt. The DISABILITY pension has become more and more restricted, not to mention if you are under 35, magically they will review you and kick you off it to work because, "You are too young to be on a pension." This among other things. Then when they retire, we are expected to pay their pensions, which they get before the retirement age that they set, as soon as they quit politics. Seems if you are a politician the rules just don't seem to apply.

So let me get a little more on target...

To qualify for the Disability Support Pension (DSP) in Australia, you need to achieve 20 points on one table, which they have adjusted again to make it more difficult. These are the Social Security (Tables for the Assessment of Work-related Impairment for Disability Support Pension) Determination 2011, these can be found here. What this means is if you have, multiple conditions which combine together, rather than a single condition alone which causes you issues, you won't get it.

Under the previous tables there were individuals who have since been taken off the DSP, mainly because they were under 35 who had previously gained it due to medical issues of a spinal nature. The tables have been tightened so much that there are people who are in wheelchairs who do not qualify under the new tables and have been removed from the DSP and placed back into the workplace, and often with little or no support.

So while the rest of Australia tightens their belts, and her most vulnerable individuals suffer our politicians go on and do what they think is "best for the country". In my opinion they are doing what is best for their bank accounts and their futures with their nice safe pensions which the Australian population has to pay.

So, I usually complain about people making complaints and giving no solutions. I will give a solution which will solve many of the problems. Make the same rules apply to the politicians as apply to the ordinary Australian. Same age for pension. Same restriction for getting paid pension and other benefits (residency and means testing for example). Reduce the pay of politicians down to the same rate as any other government administrator.

Cheers,

Henry.

You Know You Have Chronic Pain When... (Part 2)

Greetings,

It has been a while. This is the continuation of my list from the last part, which I started a while ago. You can read the first part here: http://alifewithfibromyalgia.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/you-know-you-have-chronic-pain-when.html .

11) There is a pile of empty medicine packets on the floor beside your bed because you couldn't get them to the bin. (Thanks, Claire :) )
12) You feel that friends and family should feel privileged to see you out of your pyjamas when they visit.
13) Sexual encounters are more dependent on pain level than your interest.
14) You ignore pain to keep functioning and only realise how bad it is when you get severely nauseated.
15) You need an atmospheric thermometer because you can't tell what the actual "room" temperature is.

If I can find/think of any more I will add them as I go. More than likely I will be adding them in batches of five, just like this one.

Cheers,

Henry.