Distraction Therapy, A Guest Post For AXIS Dance Company’s Awesome Blog, And Exciting New Business Ventures

I know it’s been a while, I’m sorry to leave anyone hanging, I did not intend to abandon my blog for so long. I have been very busy while I was away from writing, I promise! One of the last things I wrote before I went on hiatus this past summer has just been published, thanks to my brilliant friend Rebecca, as a Guest Post on AXIS Dance Company’s blog. The article I wrote covers the topic of distraction therapy in relation to managing chronic pain, something I am incredibly grateful for. This isn’t the reason I have been gone, but it is something I have been wanting to write about my experience with for a long time. Though it was written months ago, when I came back to read it yesterday, I discovered that it applies even more now.

Here is the link to the post I am so excited for the opportunity to have written:

JESSI CHVAL ON DISTRACTION THERAPY AND CHRONIC PAIN

Published on November 24, 2015

Blog Editor: Rebecca Fortelka

In the guest post, I make sure to include steps I have taken to prevent losing my creative force. There is a portion dealing with guilt that was especially appropriate for me to remind myself of this week. I also describe my top ten distractions and some of the ways I have modified those activities so that they are still possible to enjoy, maybe not every day, but regularly. I am seeing first hand that with practice, pacing, and modifications to favorite activities, you can still lead a fulfilling, richly creative life in the face of chronic pain or illness (or both).

One activity swap I have done is due to not having the energy or physical stamina to paint any more, at least for now. I was devastated at first. Losing painting hurt so much and left such a void, and my grief over not being physically capable of painting seems to come in waves. Knowing how far away from myself I feel when I can’t garden, paint, or cook, three of my more physical hobbies that used to dominate my free time, I took the opportunity to rekindle an old hobby; beadworking and jewelry making! I am loving every second of it, even with the arthritis in my hands, this is something I can do in bed or sitting up.

The reason I have been gone for so long is that I opened an Etsy shop to sell my jewelry and artwork. The shop is called The Hopeful Spoon, where I design, make, and sell Awareness Jewelry for spoonies, as well as Boho beaded creations for the free-spirited style-hunter. Some select pieces of artwork are slowly being added to the store as well. In one month of being open for business so far, I haven’t done half bad! Currently, I am averaging a sale every other day, which is about a quarter of where I need to be, but definitely gives me hope that I can meet my goal in the not too distant future.

Many people have helped me get started, and if I could continue sitting up today, I would give them each the credit they deserve, but that will have to be my next post!

For my readers, I have special spoonie discount codes, as well as two public coupons that are displayed in my shop announcement. The first code is 10SSPOONIE for 10% off of any price order, and the second is 20SPOONIE for 20% off of $50 or more! Happy holiday shopping, and thank you for checking out my newest artistic endeavors. I am loving having my passion for art back in my daily life. I hope you love the designs I have been working with as much as I love creating them. Here is a peak at just a couple of the goodies up on my new shop, with more being added almost every day:

 

Glad to be back here again, and I can’t wait to see what new achievements 2016 will bring.

Thank you so much for reading my guest post at AXIS Dance Company, checking out my jewelry shop, or sharing either project. I have had a happy, silly grin on my face for days despite it being a really symptomatic week.

I appreciate all the help I have been so fortunate to receive from my spoonie friends, because it is your help that my relatively good first month of business is built on.

Don’t forget the coupon codes if you head over to my shop! They do not expire until January 31st.

Hope everyone had a very tranquil Thanksgiving full of all your happiest holiday traditions.

The Autonomic Nervous System & Why It Matters

Dysautonomia Awareness Month: October 2015

Somehow, dysautonomia and all the illnesses under its umbrella have continued to be brushed off as a woman’s issue, exaggeration, not a big deal, “just live with it”, “I get dizzy sometimes too, have you tried drinking more water?”, “come on, I bet you’d feel better if you just got up and got out of the house”, or everyone’s favorite, “You don’t look sick, though.” As if every POTsie hasn’t tried slugging back a dozen bottles of gatorade and coconut water per day for weeks on end, as though we somehow prefer lying in bed or using a wheelchair to get around and depending on our friends/families for everything when two years ago we could bike or run as far as we wanted, as if we haven’t all tried to convince ourselves in the beginning of our illnesses that it might just be in our head and gone out to do the thing, only to pass out doing the thing, or before we could do the thing. And what on earth does sick even look like?! No one can answer that question, I’ve found.

I’m putting salt in my coffee as I write this, and I have 32oz of water in a quart sized mason jar lined up behind that which I must drink just so I can take a shower without falling on my face (again). After I get out of the shower, the heat will have made all the blood pool in my stretchy veins in my legs, which will be extremely puffy and swollen and sting like crazy when my feet touch the bath mat. I won’t be able to dry off, most likely, so I’ll wrap up in a towel and cling to the walls on my way to rest in bed for twenty minutes, at which point hopefully I will be dry and slightly recovered. I will still be dizzy, hot-flash-y, have a bright red line across my nose and cheeks, and I will probably feel very nauseous for a few hours, sometimes even the rest of the day, but I will push on, salting yet another cup of coffee, salting my food, chugging water throughout my afternoon and evening, and I will struggle through my physical therapy exercises, I will quite possibly be too weak to pull my own damn covers over my body tonight, and that’s life with a very mild case of POTS. I’m one of the lucky ones, I can count my falls on my fingers instead of by the dozens. I’m lucky because in the morning when the blood pooling is at its worst I can lift my own legs, lean them up against the wall and flex until the blood goes back where it needs to be. I’m lucky that I can take a shower by myself at all, even if it’s kind of miserable. I’m lucky that if I bend over I don’t necessarily land on my head every time. But I know so many wonderful people who are not so lucky. I’m lucky that I’ve had my symptoms my entire life and they haven’t taken the sudden turn for the worst that I’ve seen happen to so many friends. So I do all the things (just less often than I used to) that my autonomic nervous system make so very complicated, and I try my best to only state what my reality is, rather than complaining about it. Life is this way, I cannot change it for myself or my loved ones. All I can do is educate others, soak up as much knowledge as possible, and keep trying my best to reverse my symptoms slowly over time.

Finding Out Fibro

October is Dysautonomia Awareness Month.

Please help us spread the word about malfunction of the autonomic nervous system and the many chronic conditions it can cause. There is no cure for dysautonomia, it is an invisible illness, and from day to day the symptoms swing between severe and less severe, so life with any of these illnesses is a roller-coaster, to say the least.

No one bothered to teach me about the autonomic nervous system. In a perfect world, doctors would explain these things to patients who are experiencing classic symptoms of ANS malfunction, as I am, and they would explain just how involved the ANS is in so many processes throughout the body. Normally, when you are in pain or experiencing stress, your autonomic nervous system ramps up your blood pressure, makes you sweat, and elevates your heart rate. When the pain or stressor is gone, your ANS should quiet…

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Staying Present During A Flare Up

It’s a major challenge to remain present despite the feelings of despair about all my worsening symptoms and lack of options that I am staring down. At the same time I’m always trying to figure out more and more about living inside my energy envelope and enduring the chronic pain, the lack of predictability, the severity and suddenness that my symptoms frequently come on.

Fortunately, a louder part of me than the despair knows that it’s important to grow and learn from this never-ending flareup, otherwise I am just surviving hour to hour, living in fear, and that isn’t enough for me. I’m greedy.

I want to get to a better place so I can really live again, within my limitations. So I can make my mark, however that is possible. It has to be possible. Everything is so hard now, but I know who I am, and I know who my friends are. I’m stronger than ever in some ways, and I am learning to forgive myself for the weaker parts.

Even when all I can do is breathe, it helps to remember that just being alive is amazing and improbable. I am so grateful for days when I am capable of seeing past the storms overhead. It’s okay that I can’t do that every day, because I’m doing my best.

from Instagram: http://ift.tt/1ENzmMI

A Book for Moms With Chronic Pain and Chronic Illnesses!

I know I haven’t been around in a while and I’m very sorry, life has been so crazy and my typing and thought process so poor that I’ve been taking an unintentionally long break. I have been writing every now and again, but mostly on Tumblr and Instagram, and sometimes for images I make in photoshop. Maybe I should post all those soon? I have also written about thirty drafts on WordPress that have been eaten, gone unfinished at the last minute, or that I am too embarrassed to post right now (and maybe ever). I will get back into the swing of things slowly but surely in the next month.

But, for now, I was stumbling through Amazon, and found this book and it just about made me burst into tears. I want kids so badly but because of EDS pregnancy dangers, my family history of Spina Bifida occulta and neural tube defects, the strong possibility that I have the MTHFR gene mutation, and a bunch of other factors, including a total phobia of doctors (I can’t even get into that on here or I will freak out and lose my relative calm for how much pain I am in and the fact that it’s 3:30am).

Though I want children desperately, what I really want and desire above a biological child is to adopt. I’ve always wanted to adopt. There will always be kids out there right now who need families. It seems so against my values to selfishly have a child via birth when I know there is little chance that child will not suffer like I do, and when I know that my ability to be a good parent to a very young child is never going to be strong enough. The thing is, I have a lot of love to give and knowledge to share, if not a lot of physical ability. Unfortunately, I will still struggle with very basic mom things, like shopping for clothes, or food for that matter, or taking them places at all, and cleaning isn’t getting any easier or more feasible lately though I try really hard. I’ve always wanted to be the perfect mom, but I think a large part of chronic illness is accepting that even healthy people don’t live up to that, therefore I certainly won’t.

I will be a good mom, I think, but I will have to work really freaking hard at it, and it will take everything that I have to give and more. Even if I do adopt a child, I am worried that I will feel like a failure as a mom no matter how much I try to cut myself slack for what I can’t control.

Seeing this book helped me a little. Knowing others are struggling with this, and that enough people even to sell a book about it.

Has anyone actually read this to their kids or bought it for themselves/future reasons? I hope there are more books like this out there by the time I am able to foster or adopt.

Why Does Mommy Hurt?: Helping Children Cope with the Challenges of Having a Caregiver with Chronic Pain, Fibromyalgia, or Autoimmune Disease

Not Pretending

I hesitate to admit this, but it’s important. Before i got sick I was already pretending to be normal, pretending to be happy and productive and on some sort of trajectory, but I was just as lost as I am now. I have been dealing with severe anxiety disorders my entire life, ADHD, obsessive behaviors too numerous to list, occasional bouts of treatment resistant depression, insomnia, self-injury, severely restricted eating or binge eating depending on the year, as well as growing up with chronic pain to a much lesser degree than now in the form of frequent dislocations/subluxations, migraines, and dizziness/nausea, all of which went untreated for a long time, or treated but not correctly.

Now that I have a series of chronic illnesses/conditions, my mental health is under the microscope constantly. It has been enlightening but also terrifying. Not being able to hide my mental health or my physical health anymore is the part I’m still trying to accept. I’m used to being miserable to a degree and pushing through, always pushing through, and to have my body take that ability away from me has caused some serious grieving.

The thing I was most commended for other than my test scores was my ability to pretend like I wasn’t hurting while I was, both physically and mentally. All of the bits and pieces that make me my own person are also things that drew negative attention when I was younger, and I have trouble getting over that still.

My response to the negative attention, eventually, was to reinvent myself to be as normal as possible, as plain as possible, to not stand out too much, and to deny my artsy, nerdy, angsty side the freedom it wanted. Now I’m left with artsy, nerdy, angsty as things I need to learn to be proud of and to embrace again. I want to, I really do.

Those parts of me which long for the freedom to reinvent myself into the person I really am are winning. My hair is teal, my clothes are whatever the hell I feel like, I have been writing more honestly and openly, and I have picked up a paintbrush again.

So the path is there, I know what I need to do, but I’m scared to be myself again. For so long I’ve been this average-intelligence, straight, workaholic, brown-haired, plain-clothed girl who kept the ugliness and the oddness to herself, absolutely devoid of the desire to write the darkness inside of me or to paint it, only allowing thoughts out through a careful filter, and calling that happiness. It wasn’t. Neither was it sadness, exactly. I was just going in the wrong direction.

The reality is that my careful filter is broken now and only works in fits and starts… I can’t be anyone other than the person I have always been underneath the normal life I was trying to build around me like armor. I still love the interests I have cultivated while lost and wandering through life; I still love to garden, bake, and make my own home and beauty products. I absolutely still love my boyfriend, as well as this house and our cat. This is simply my soul wanting me to unleash it in any way possible in my new life, with my new limitations. I need to find a purpose, yes, but I also need to find myself again, be kind to myself instead of denying myself the freedom to be weird and potentially wonderful. So much anxiety must be tied up in the act of pretending not to be excited about the things that truly make me happy.

I don’t fully know what my happiness will look like now, but it will look different than the one I pretended was right for me.

To be honest, I’m relieved.

There are parts of me that are stronger than ever, and then obviously there are parts of me that are so weak that they have stolen life and time from me. But I am a survivor. This is me surviving. It might not be pretty, the struggle can get ugly and mean in an instant, but I have always survived, and I will continue to do my best. That will have to be enough.

I’m not any less okay than I was yesterday or the day before, I am simply not willing to pretend to be better or different than I feel. Some days I am still a suicidal teenager and some days I am a sage adult, and many days I bounce back and forth between the two. However, both are okay, both are me, and I am always going to be a survivor, even when I have no idea what else I am.

The term survivor implies that someone came through or currently resides in hell, however, and that is the part that people seem to forget. The struggle is what breaks you, but it is also what rebuilds you. We cannot be the same after we travel through nightmares turned reality.

Not the same, but certainly still me.

I am just too exhausted to draw a silver lining on my clouds today. Today it’s okay to acknowledge the storm overhead. To be soaked in it and shivering and afraid of the power behind it, but to remember that the sun also exists, just beyond those clouds.

You Don’t Always Have to Feel Grateful That it Isn’t Worse

So, I’m going to just say that things have been pretty bad for me right now. I have so damn many health care, financial, and emotional needs that are not being met, and after three and a half years of waiting my turn, I need something better than this, I need more, I need to live and have hope and at least try to get treatment for some of these problems. But just because I need something doesn’t mean it is possible. Money is an asshole that way. All ways, really.

I am still grieving the loss of a dear friend, and I talk to her at night when it’s quiet like this, and I think she hears me, but I don’t even know how to put into words how much it hurts to obliviously type her name on facebook like I’m going to see her there posting updates, and then to realize that no one gets to hear her sunny voice again. Who knows why it takes so long for the shock to wear off and the sadness that won’t lift to settle in. It’s like my bones are crying now, and I feel her absence physically.

All these things coupled with isolation and excessive pain levels with secondary depression, plus a nasty chest cold have made me a slightly more bitter girl, and I apologize for that, but then again, I kind of don’t want to apologize. Though it’s embarrassing to go off on an angry rant and publish it and re-read it the next day and not recognize who wrote the words, I did write it, and I did mean every word when I was writing and that tells me that someone else out there can maybe feel less alone if I continue to allow myself to occasionally write the lows, the times I don’t cope well, that my chronic illness brings.

The reason I’m suffering this week is simple. I went out, I lived a life for a week with two social calls an hour away from my house, and the consequence for my actions are a dire flare up and infections, even though I practiced preemptive rest, stayed hydrated, slept beforehand and loaded up on vitamins. That’s what the fuss is about, for any non-spoonies reading this. That’s why I’m “obsessed” with my illness and I never seem to win. You can do everything right and chronic illness is still a merciless, evil, cold hearted f*ck who will laugh at your plans, your support network, your therapy progress, your talents, and even your basic needs, and which will deny you access to them all from time to time.

I’m not trying to paint a grim picture, or a “poor me” kind of portrait, I’m trying to say that all spoonies, no matter how small you may see your contributions to be, all spoonies are important. You are important and you matter.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

I guess I’m leaning towards the idea that if I don’t censor myself, I will probably help more people feel accepted and welcomed into the chronic illness community. We don’t have to have rainbows shooting out of our asses all the time to be valued and welcome members of the online spoonie community. I like encouraging people with stories about good days and things I am thankful for, and I won’t give that up, but I also don’t want to be missing a whole group of spoonies who feel pretty worthless and unaccepted by the rest of the chronic world.

Everyone needs a place to belong, even the undiagnosed, the doesn’t-quite-fit-the-diagnosis patients who are still in limbo, they need our support more than anyone. That is a stage in my journey where I was bitter every single day for at least a year.

So I’m going to perhaps post more vehement pieces than usual and not hold myself back. I will stop telling myself I can’t write on my worst days unless I have a good attitude while I do it,because that’s not therapeutic for me, for one thing. I do factor in here too, somewhere, I think.

The reality of being ill is that you will have some good days, some of us get more or less of those depending on our situation, some of us don’t have good days physically, but almost all spoonies eventually get to the point where you can have a series of bad days that you can handle emotionally, and those bad days will make you proud of yourself later on without too much soul searching involved. You endured and even conquered your illness for a while. You got through it without snapping and that’s to be commended. But it’s not to be expected from you. Positivity during hardship is not the only “right way” to cope. Because look what happens next; you overdo it or the weather changes or you cough funny, you have a medication reaction, or you develop a new symptom or allergy and things get complicated.

“Didn’t I just get through another hard week like this?” you think to yourself. It drags on, but you get through it, kind of numb and just making it day by day. And then not-so-wonderfully, another health setback; you have to take care of someone else who is ill, you get asked to another social function you can’t get out of, you have to attend three doctor’s appointments in one week, or whatever else it is, but it adds onto the pile you had not quite dug your way out of from last week yet. But you get through that week, and the next one too, though on the bad days you’re just counting the hours, you can’t even take it day by day things get so overwhelming. Months go by like this, a cycle of debilitation and not-quite-recovery only to be met with more medical problems, more stress, more debt, more isolation and eventually the bitterness that you thought maybe you had “gotten past” can sneak back up on you.

I’m not saying you are required by spoonie law or something ridiculous to feel all of these things in these specific ways for these reasons. I’m just setting the stage for those who are being hard on themselves for not coping as well as they’d like, and for people who may not understand what suffering from an invisible illness can be like when you aren’t improving.

No matter how you cope, or how well you “keep calm and carry on”, you still deserve to be commended. You’ve gone through a lot, and you should feel safe and understood when you are being honest about your pain. Honesty is not negativity.

Wishing everyone extra spoons, low pain days, and super soft fuzzy blankets that don’t hurt you while you’re sleeping. ❤

I Am Not Your Inspiration: The Problem With Inspiration Porn

“Disability doesn’t make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.” – Stella Young

The danger of being viewed through the lense of the “inspiring cripple” archetype is that it was created by ableists as a tool used to invalidate those who are struggling. It means that people expect things from you that you weren’t even capable of before disability, muchless after. It’s such an unhealthy way of approaching people who are ill, as if we are not trying hard enough unless we can plaster a fake smile on our face and say we’re doing well, when actually we are struggling in ways that only a small percentage of the population can understand. The notion of the inspiring cripple does not leave room for the uncensored reality of the chronic illness spectrum.

If you are able-bodied and do not experience mental illness, I am not your inspiration. If something I say or write is helpful to another spoonie, then that is why I am here and it makes me happy to be helpful whenever possible, but I don’t want ableist individuals thinking that my refusal to cry in a corner every day makes me somehow better at being sick than someone who can’t stop sobbing and wishing for death. I am not any better.

I am not “trying harder” than anyone else and I will not be used to shame someone who feels like they can’t handle their condition. I still feel like I can’t handle being chronically ill on a regular basis.

I am not your feel-good story. I am a deeply flawed human being with constant, unrelenting chronic pain and many other debilitating conditions and symptoms, too. My choices are give up and die, or keep trying to find a reason to wake up and to put food in my mouth once a day. Sometimes that is a genuine struggle. Sometimes I do not get out of bed, and I do not put food in my body, and that does not make me pathetic or weak, it makes me sick. I have good days and bad days and I have given myself permission to have both.

I am so very tired of inspiration porn, aimed at the general public and unapologetically using those who are physically disabled, suffer chronic pain, or live with mental illness and/or neurodivergence. Inspiration porn wants you to say “well, it could be worse, I could be that poor person in a wheelchair or that teenager with a cane, therefore I’m not allowed to feel shitty, ever.”

Bull. Shit.

I am happy to answer any and all genuine questions about my life, my coping strategy, my illnesses, or anything else that someone is interested in, provided that the person asking is not just going to use my answers against me later. I am not interested in answering questions that are actually just thinly-veiled judgemental commentary on how I deal with my pain and other symptoms. I wish that my abled friends could just acknowledge that my reality is not something you can comprehend if you don’t live every second of every day in pain, knowing that the pain is life-long or progressive.

If you are not sick in a long-term sense, please try to understand why you cannot compare my life-altering, completely debilitating daily pain to the last time you had the flu, or the time you broke your arm, or even the car accident you were in, unless one of those things resulted in a long-term illness, disability, or chronic pain disorder. Flus, broken bones, and car accidents may be unpleasant, but after some healing your life resumed as planned, so you have no idea what it is like to live in my body, the body that has caused me to slowly, against my will, forget all my dreams and plans for the future. Please realize that every pain is experienced differently and is unique to each individual who is suffering. Comparison of one disabled person to another person, disabled or not, is never okay. We are not brave for the things healthy people think we are brave for. We are not brave for simply existing, we are not brave for going about our day as normally as we possibly can. Attitude does not differentiate a “good” cripple from a “bad” cripple. Inspiration porn is pure victim blaming, and society has unfortunately picked up this nasty habit.

Ableist propaganda would have us think that if we are not using our illness to transform ourselves into an inspiration, we are just wasting space and burdening those around us. Do not buy into that trash! I am sorry for each and every person who has ever felt like their pain or illness is the punchline to an ableist joke. Those of us who are ill are allowed to make jokes, we are allowed to seek out the humor in our situation, and it is despicable that people would use that coping mechanism against us. Yes, I use sarcasm to cope. Yes, I use humor to cope. No, that does not mean I’m cured or experiencing less pain or “getting better at dealing with it” as so many have said to me. It means that if I don’t laugh about this, it will crush me.

My medical decisions are not up for discussion unless you are another spoonie, and even then, I retain the freedom to completely ignore any and all medical advice that doesn’t come from my doctors. I even retain the right to ignore medical advice from doctors that does not make sense or goes against my beliefs.

I certainly won’t be basing my medical decisions off of an abled friend’s (ex-friend’s) suggestion because they feel like they have “observed my pain” (read: been annoyed by how much I talk about it) for long enough that they are unreasonably comfortable making sweeping declarations about my use of medication, or with stating that I “pity myself” (read: retreat from overwhelming and triggering situations so I can take care of myself appropriately) sometimes. Fuck yeah, I do pity myself sometimes. I refuse to apologize for that.

The abled seem to possess an unlimited capacity to confuse my online and in-person honesty and unwillingness to sugar-coat reality with what they view as pity-seeking behavior and weakness. Saying I have an incurable illness is not pitying myself, it is the truth. I am allowed to speak the truth, my truth, and I am allowed to remark at the depressing reality of chronic pain. Ableism makes accepting the reality of our illness that much more difficult. If I said I never have moments of self-pity I would be lying, and that helps no one. I have every right to be upset about my conditions and to grieve over the losses in my life as a result. And so do other spoonies at any point in their journey.

It is just grotesque that there are people self-righteously using those of us struggling with mental illness, cancer, or chronic invisible illness (to name a few) as their motivation, or to shame others with similar struggles. I don’t want my accomplishments to ever be used to make someone feel inadequate.

The myths that are perpetuated by inspiration porn make it harder to be honest about what we as spoonies experience, which is why it’s time to start calling ableism out wherever and whenever we see it. Just because one person with MS can work a full time job does not mean that another MS patient is faking their inability to work. It’s such a simple thing, to validate someone, yet we don’t do it enough.

You wouldn’t worry about being polite when calling out racism or homophobia, so why would you worry about offending people when you call out their discriminatory attitudes towards chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, mental illness, and chronic pain?

Chronic Lessons: Then and Now

When I first came down with an invisible illness shortly after being in a car struck by a semi-truck, things looked pretty bleak.

My thought process after six months of dealing with the constant doctor visits and physical therapy, with the pain, fatigue, and fevers, was that either me or my illness was gonna go. Both of us were not gonna share this body.

Fix it or kill me. That was my motto. I could not conceive of a world in which I could not work, but in which I still had value. Value despite a dollar amount I was bringing in. No part of me wanted to accept that I would have to learn to live with this, or that my life not only had to be paused, but also that I may never be able to participate in the same ways as before no matter what I tried to cure myself. We hadn’t even started talking about disease processes or autoimmune or anything at all other than injury from the car accident, but I was frustrated that I just kept getting worse the more work I did to heal.

On the days in between flare ups, before I knew what a flare up even was, I insisted to myself that I was cured, and I was horribly let down and unprepared for every single episode or new symptom that manifested.

When people told me it would be easier and better to approach my illness from a place of positivity, I was furious, because they were making the assumption that I wanted to live with pain in every part of my body, and I really did not, at least not at that point. I had just recently been perfectly healthy, my body and brain up to any challenge set in front of me. How could I adjust to being so drastically limited and in so much pain I couldn’t even drive or work a full shift? It truly seemed impossible.

It also felt like when people tried to encourage me to make peace with all the unknowns and all the debilitating symptoms they were implying that mind over matter would cure me, or at least allow me to live a ‘normal’ or fulfilling life. Again, a life without a job and my recently hard-won independence seemed so completely unfulfilling. I went straight into defensive language, outbursts, and isolation at the first suggestion that somehow I was expected to be strong enough to cope with physical weakness, fatigue, pain, sensitivities to sound, light, chemicals, smells, and touch, energy crashes, cognitive dysfunction, lack of ability to work or drive, and the accompanying guilt and grief that go with losing your place in life right after you gain autonomy over it for the first time. I could find so many more reasons to be upset than to be optimistic. It felt like everything I loved had been ripped away, like all my choices had been taken from me. Of course that isn’t true, but for newly diagnosed or undiagnosed pain patients, especially at a young age, it’s entirely common to feel like it is the end of your life and nothing good will ever be possible again unless it comes packaged as a complete and total cure. The temptation is to retreat and hope that you can pick back up again where you left off when you feel better, and that’s acceptable with temporary injuries and illnesses, but with chronic illness there are often no “feel better” days, and there is only so much hiding from life you can do before it becomes apparent that life is going to continue, albeit differently.

I still have moments where I think I can’t handle it, and weeks where everything spins around me and I hope hope hope I will still be okay when it all lands again. I still fear for my future, I fear for my relationships, and feel insecure about my lowered libido, frequent whining, fitness level, and inability to contribute financially. Those things are part of being human though, if I didn’t experience some guilt and upset over them, I wouldn’t be me.

Amazingly, I have learned a lot through illness. I have learned to be patient no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy I am. I have learned to take care of and prioritize myself even when it feels selfish and lazy. I have learned that internalized ableism is what makes me feel that way, and that ableism does not do me any good, especially not when it has become a part of my own thought process. I have learned the importance of asking for help, though I haven’t quite mastered actually asking for it. So much has sunk in; things that I was resistant to when fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome first reared their heads. I wonder if I am even the same person anymore, but not in a totally negative way.

I have learned above all that there is not as much wrong with me as there is with a society that teaches people to base worth off of income earned, sexual intensity, physical ability, and even intelligence. There is nothing wrong with having an excess of one or even all of those things. But there is nothing inherently better about possessing those things, either. Except that it certainly makes your way in life a lot easier to have money, health, sex appeal, and unlimited brainpower. Maybe that’s what I like more about myself now; it’s not that easy anymore, I can’t just draw on one of those things and call myself a better person for having it. I can’t reassure myself with meaningless attributes, and that is its own kind of blessing. I have to concern myself instead with things like courage, persistence, kindness, and even that elusive thing we call happiness. Amidst all the pain, being ill has given me something wonderful; it has allowed me to seek out those true, meaningful, beautiful traits in others, regardless of what value society has assigned to someone.

I’m actually surprised that the person I was ten years ago has grown up into a person who does not hate herself and who rarely wastes energy on disliking others. It’s a pleasant realization. I really believe I must have hated myself to treat my abled and active body with such disdain, and to have thought I was so boring when my life was always so full of unique friendships and passions, and to have constantly been comparing myself to others and feeling so shortchanged. Not to say I don’t have moments where my body is a source of insecurity, and I certainly get frustrated with the slow, meandering pace that my brain operates at now. Somehow though, over the years, the negativity has become tempered with “but tomorrow I will be grateful for what I do have”.

A lot of my current (relative) level of peace has to do with getting almost all the way off of Lyrica and starting to paint again (more about that soon!). A lot of it has to do with this blog and the wonderful people who have introduced themselves and the strong sense of community that lives here. Also through the groups I have been invited into because of my writing here. A lot has to do with therapy, some of it with self-therapy techniques, and some with the actual, lasting progress I have made along the way. It’s easy to look back at three and a half years of illness and feel overwhelmed with all the life I have not lived in that time. I had planned to have a career and a child by now, and perhaps to have bought my house.

Ten years ago, I would have only seen that big dark cloud of not measuring up materially to the person I had set out to become, and I never would have noticed all the glints of silver lining to be found from where I’m standing in the rain. Three years ago, I feared there was no happiness or peace to be found amongst the terror and the overwhelming nature of being sick in my early twenties. Two years ago, I knew that others lived with diseases and still had fulfilling lives, but the knowledge just made me angry. A year ago, the knowledge that others out there were dealing with similar things and did not want to die every single day started to give me hope, and this blog helped me find those people and learn the self-acceptance that I needed so badly.

Now, I want to start to figure out what I can do to give back, but I have taken a pretty big set back this week by conscious overexertion so I could spend time with my family and my mom while she was visiting Oregon for ten days. During my recovery from this, I will be writing more and pondering what I have to contribute, and where the chronic pain community would be best served by what I do have to offer.

Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for reaching out to me, thank you for being so understanding and gentle, and so patient. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Tool Box : Resources for the chronically ill

A thoughtful, well-made list of extra steps to take when you are experiencing a flare-up of symptoms, no matter what illness(es) you may suffer from. The author, Audrey, was diligent about this list and surveyed others to get a more complete array of options. I feel like there is something on this list for all of us, and as Audrey says in the post, “Because, let’s face it, when we are in the throes of a serious bout of turmoil, we forget. We forget to reach to those resources we so carefully crafted, selected. We forget the hours we poured into trial and error sessions to find what works best to help us and when.” She is so right. I love having a place to refer to when I am hurting so bad I can’t steer my thoughts away from the illness and pain. Even if I don’t feel capable of doing everything on this list, I can always do one thing, and the more I practice these techniques, the better I become at accepting and making peace with my illnesses.

My Chronic Lessons

Having a tool box is essential to coping with a chronic condition whether it be pain, illness, depression or some other continuous issue. A tool box helps us get through moments, sometimes days and maybe weeks but the true purpose is to help us see passed the hard moments we don’t know how to manage.

Now, I’m not talking about an actual Craftsman tool box because it’s a bit big and unrealistic for most of us, but if you find that helps, awesome. I’m talking about a box of resources for all the challenges we face on an on-going basis. Sometimes it helps to have an actual box with these things listed inside, perhaps on slips of paper, or filled with happy thoughts, other times an excel or word document, notebook, fridge magnet, or other key reminders. Because, let’s face it, when we are in the throes of a serious bout…

View original post 1,392 more words

Learn How To Rest

A quick image I made because I’m struggling with this right now and need the reminder.

Maybe someone else could use it too?

Chronic illness warriors are great at pushing through, but as we all know, that is not always the best or healthiest option, although sometimes it seems like the only option. Pushing through can lead to a flare up that sets us back for days, weeks, or even months. Rest is a real job with chronic illness. No matter how we may be feeling, even if it’s better than usual, every single day consists of maintenance and making difficult choices that can help or harm us in the quest for balance. Most of the choices you have to make are things the people around you cannot understand. That makes it even more difficult to prioritize our own well-being in stressful situations.

To all those who wrestle with the guilt surrounding being chronically ill or in constant pain, I am right there with you.

Love you guys!

❤

7 Cups of Tea: Free Online Chat with an Active Listener or Therapist

Introducing the free mental health resource 7 Cups of Tea to anyone who hasn’t heard of them before.

If you need someone to talk to, any time, this is a great website to save in your favorites. All chats are anonymous, and you can either connect to the first available listener or find someone who fits your needs from their list of therapists and listeners.

 Free, anonymous, and confidential conversations. All sessions are deleted.

7 Cups of Tea is a safe, non-judgmental online space to talk it out with trained active listeners. You can even connect with a therapist or active listener whose specialties are of interest to you or your particular situation. There is also group support if that is more your style.

7 Cups also offers a set of thorough self help guides to consult, including self-help for chronic pain, as well as for anxiety, college life, and even one for entrepreneurs who are struggling with their start up companies. There are a wide variety of topics covered, you may be surprised to see a self-help guide for something you thought not that many people struggled with. They keep an expanding library of articles about specific mental health topics, such as this post on Mindfulness.

There is a lot to see on this website, and a lot to remind us about basic self-care during the tougher times in our lives. The self-help guides might seem repetitious for spoonies and those living with chronic pain, but our mind plays tricks on us when we are at our lowest, and the simplest of ways to practice self-compassion and healing slip through our fingers. That’s why it’s a useful website to bookmark and visit often, even when you’re not planning to chat with an active listener. I have added 7 Cups of Tea to my Chronic Illness Resources Page. Any online resource like this is just fabulous, and this is one of the best I have found. Plus, it’s FREE, and free is an awesome price. Especially for those of us who are prohibited from working by our illness or pain.

Volunteer Opportunity Alert:

If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity that you can do any time from home, this may be perfect for you! They are always looking for new Active Listeners to train so that more people can receive one on one attention.

Click here to begin the sign up process

Suggestions?

If anyone has any suggestions for self-help websites or free online therapy, please leave the URL below in a comment and it will be added to my Chronic Illness Resources Page.

New Site Header

I tried to make a new header and improve my blog’s layout a tiny bit, but I just can’t decide which header image I like the best, out of all the ones I have made. I guess I haven’t knocked my own socks off yet with any of them, so until then this blue beach scene will have to do. Reminds me of the coast in oregon on an especially pretty day, mixed with the hand-painted watercolor cards my grandma used to send on birthdays.

Check it out, tell me what  you think:

You can see I did decide to change the wording of my tagline from “survive with chronic pain” to “live well with chronic pain” as I think that’s a better goal for me now, more than a year out from my diagnosis of Fibromyalgia, about a year out from learning that I also had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, and Spina Bifida Occulta, and about six months into realizing that I haven’t been making as much progress as I would like, because I also need to deal with  several anxiety disorders, including PTSD. It’s been three and a half years since I was in an auto accident that changed my life forever. I no longer am content with “surviving” because it’s not enough, I want to do more than just get through the day. I want to thrive, chronic illness and pain be damned.

Right now I’m really trying to remind myself to just make one or two changes at a time since I have another blog to get off the ground right now and don’t need to be spending so much time over here, but I can’t seem to stay away. At least I’m taking my own advice about making small changes one at a time instead of trying to overhaul the entire theme in one day.

Artist Perfectly Illustrates How Different The World Looks With Social Anxiety

via Distractify | Artist Perfectly Illustrates How Different The World Looks With Social Anxiety.

I’ve gotta say, this gets it pretty damn right. Not to say I’m proud of that, just that the artist captured my unjustified complete terror at what for the average person are very ordinary events. And made me giggle, too. Enjoy!

When it comes to explaining just how different the world is to a person with social anxiety issues, College Humor’s illustrator Shea Strauss has hit the proverbial nail on the head.

 

via Distractify | Artist Perfectly Illustrates How Different The World Looks With Social Anxiety.

An Old Rant and a New Perspective

I found this article which I had written about on Facebook before I had a blog. The first time I read about this girl’s story I felt so alone, so overwhelmed and out of control and consumed by pain that I cried the entire time I was reading it. I didn’t yet realize how many of us were going through the same thing, or how many friends who truly get what chronic pain means that I would meet along the way. I just knew the desperation, anger, and denial that I was piled under. Fortunately, times have changed, or at least my perspective has. I can still really sympathize with this girl, and understand where she is coming from, and I am still incredibly grateful to her for writing her story at a time when I felt hopelessly isolated. This may have been the first time that I realized if more people were less afraid to speak out about chronic pain, we might be treated like human beings, eventually.

 

My Story: Looking for a New Doctor

National Pain Report

May 26th, 2014 by Kitty Taylor

I’ve had chronic pain as far back as I can remember. It got unbearable a few years ago after a serious injury. My body won’t forget the pain and it feels fresh as day one without medication.

I recently moved to Colorado from Nevada after being with the same doctor for many years. Now I’m having a hard time finding a new doctor willing to prescribe the medication I’ve been taking. I’ve found plenty of clinics that say they specialize in pain management, when in reality they are rehab clinics. Their sole purpose is to wean you off narcotics and put you on highly addicting medication, such as Suboxone or methadone. Some clinics are treating pain with Suboxone long term. That was not the intended use.

Then there are pain clinics, usually the spine centers, that only do injections and don’t prescribe drugs. I wish they would distinguish in their business category what they’re really about.

The first clinic I thought would be helpful turned out to be a Suboxone clinic. On my second appointment there they told me outright that I wouldn’t be continuing on the same medication and that I would be going on Suboxone. If I didn’t agree that, I was told they’d cut my doses so low I couldn’t handle it anymore. So I canceled my next appointment with them.

Drugs like methadone and Suboxone (which may or may not help the pain) are just as dangerous and the addictions to them are intense. The withdrawals are unreal. Coming off the medication I’m on now would be painful, but having to come off one of those could cause months, not just days, of withdrawal and pain.

Not only that, but imagine if you couldn’t get your next dose of methadone or Suboxone, you could end up in a coma! Any doctor that says there aren’t side effects and the withdrawals aren’t bad is lying.

It’s been four months since my last appointment with my helpful doctor and I’m still looking for a new one. One clinic I had a referral to, the doctor refused to accept me as a patient. It’s taking so long to find a doctor and I’ve got to find one quick! There are so few listed and so few that prescribe narcotics or are honest about what they practice. If you are rehab clinic you should not be advertising that you manage pain.

I’ve certainly been made to feel like a drug seeker and nothing more since I’ve moved. My last doctor never made me feel that way. He was caring and compassionate from day one. The only complaint I have about the visits there was that the DEA had them scared to prescribe medications that I had been on for a long time. My medicine and schedules were altered based on word from the DEA, not what my doctor felt was right for me and not what was working for me.

My daily function is greatly decreased since my medications were screwed with and it’s getting worse. First they took away Soma and it was painful trying to find another muscle relaxer. Even the one I’m on now sucks, but it’s better than nothing. Some of them I think were causing more muscle spasms and cramps. It was so bad I looked like I was having a seizure.

Then they couldn’t prescribe more than four oxycodone pills a day when I was on six. They couldn’t even prescribe Demerol anymore because the DEA and the county were having so many problems with it. The hospitals stopped keeping it and the pharmacies stopped ordering it because of theft and robberies!

Kitty Taylor

via My Story: Looking for a New Doctor – National Pain Report.

One of the first things to go was how many different narcotics I was prescribed at once. My doctor had me on two long acting (1 pill, 1 patch), two short acting (1 scheduled and 1 breakthrough). So for short acting, I would have 4 Dilaudid a day scheduled and then up to 6 Norco per day as needed.

The Norco was taken away and so was the patch. I was down to oral long acting 4 times a day instead of 2, and 6 short acting a day instead of 4. It worked out about the same, except those extra Norco would be a godsend about now, especially since I’m running out of as needed meds because I’ve been without an appointment for so long.

This shouldn’t be happening. I’m looking for cash only clinics now even though I have insurance because I don’t want my business in all the computers everywhere. I’d also be fine seeing a pill pushing doctor that over prescribes. I’d be able to stock up in case something like this happens again and I trust myself not to increase my medication.

I never take more than I need and I’ve never run out before my next appointment. Because of being hospitalized I’ve been able to stock up on some of my own stash while the hospital administered to me with their own pharmacy.

There’s no point in making myself more tolerant and never getting what I need. That’s why I switch my meds to equivalent doses of different kinds every few months. That way I don’t need to increase. My body becomes tolerant to one and I switch to another until I become tolerant again and I switch back. This regimen worked well for me and my doctor agreed it was better than taking more and more.

I don’t want to be labeled or discriminated against for having invisible disabilities.

I get enough smacks in the face just using my disabled parking privileges!

“Kitty Taylor” is a pseudonym. The author, who suffers from Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Cushing’s Disease and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), asked that her real name not be used.

National Pain Report invites other readers to share their stories with us.

Send them to editor@nationalpainreport.com

via My Story: Looking for a New Doctor – National Pain Report.

 

And this was my response, a year ago:

“This is so much like my story. The way she talks about having to deal with “pain clinics” who only push methadone, or who only push Lyrica and Savella, or who only do injections. None of them have the ability to actually treat acute flare ups. I know from personal experience that even when a procedure at a pain clinic goes wrong and they have caused you intense and unrelenting pain, they do not offer any help, just tell you to calm down, because you’re scaring other patients, and “if it’s really that bad” to go to the emergency room. Pain clinics are a gimmick. A glimmer of hope that turns out to be bullshit when you get up close, every time.

I can’t do cortisone injections, I can’t take most antidepressants, nor steroids, nor do I care to, I am taking Lyrica and two different muscle relaxers at the same time for spasms and I also take all the usual Vitamin D, B-12, magnesium, zinc, rosehips, tart cherry extract, etc, that seem to help maybe? Who knows. The only time I have ever gotten any relief from this pain is after six hours waiting in agony at an Emergency Room, watching junkies and fakers get treated with more dignity than you, because you refused the little cup full of oxycodone and valium (I had already taken my personal comfortable limit of oxy while waiting in the ER, and I told them so, and I don’t do well with valium, it causes panic attacks and it’s written so in my charts if they had payed attention). One time I was told rudely to leave the ER, and then billed $600+ for the pleasure of being treated like human garbage by a very bitchy ER doctor after waiting many hours to be seen. Twice I received actual pain relief that lasted maybe five hours and was the only relief from the hell of fibro that I have had in two years. I haven’t been to the ER in over a year, but I think about how the ER is always full of people who feel better than me. The ER is a very, very, VERY last resort at this point, however.

I’m not even functioning anymore, I’ve been in way too much pain for way too long. I’m just trying to get to a place where I have enough moments in a day to take care of myself properly. I’m not even close to that level on my current treatments. Most days I can’t brush my hair or take a shower. Most days I spend two hours doing a task that should take fifteen minutes. Most days I am overwhelmed and unable to advocate for myself.

The point she makes that I think cannot be overstated is that chronic pain patients don’t abuse medications. Then we wouldn’t have them when we need them. The pain is real and we would never want to not have the ability to treat it.

We are just as scared of finally finding the right drug (can it please be a non-opiate, non-psychoactive drug?) that makes the pain bearable only to have it taken away again, as we are terrified of the pain we are in continuing unchecked. And we are scared of addiction, too. And scared for our organs. And scared for the changes in us caused by taking pain medication. We’ve weighed all that. The pain warrants the medication, or we wouldn’t take it.

The pain is already changing us, rewiring our brains, making us shells of the people we were before, and turning our bodies against us. If there were something better, we would certainly take that instead.

I understand her panic and her logic and I really feel for her.”

---

 

Phew, so that’s me a year ago. I don’t regret writing any of that, because at that time it was all true from where I was standing. It’s important to note that I was extremely depressed, and had been disappointed and disillusioned so many times. I had a primary care doctor who believed I was faking, no way of seeking relief except the ER, and I very much didn’t understand what was happening to me. At the time, open therapy was doing very little for me. I spent more time staring at my psychologist in total confusion than I did processing or talking things through. She would ask me questions like “what kinds of self-care routines are you doing on a regular basis?” and I would look at her like she had grown a second head, and she would push, “you must be able to think of one self-care activity, I don’t care how small it is.” I was still confused. Self-care? As in, my needs had to take precedent over others before I was at the point of throwing massive temper tantrums, crying uncontrollably in public and at work, and having ten panic attacks in one day? How was I supposed to even start? What did it all mean? Was this lady crazy? I was supposed to get better, not spend more time wallowing in “my needs”.

That’s my thinking a year ago. The level of brain fog I was enveloped in at that time is pretty evident, and there isn’t a lot of built in logic to my ranting, but I wasn’t even aware yet that my cognitive abilities had been taking a nosedive over the past two years. I knew I had Fibromyalgia, but I didn’t know much about it or much about what my life would look like in a year. To be honest, when I typed my response to that writer on National Pain Report, I didn’t even know if I’d be here in a year. Two girls with Ehler-Danlos Syndrome responded to my posted response on Facebook; one is a dear friend now but was someone I had just met at the time, and another I was too self-involved to reach out to in return. Currently, I am haunted that I didn’t reach back, more than I am bothered by anything that I did write. Reading through this outpouring of my own overly raw emotions made me wince, but seeing how I ignored another spoonie’s attempt to connect gave me actual regret. Both girls have EDS and encouraged me to push forward to a diagnosis.

I still don’t have the diagnosis, but I am treating my joints with much more care and attention and I am seeking physical strength instead of allowing fear of injury to mandate every activity.  I also do finally understand what self-care is and have a long, long list of ways to recognize and put disordered thinking in perspective, but I am still learning more every single day. I would no longer characterize my life as hellish. Some days are indeed horrible, but I have good days too, and I am more prone to seize them now than a year ago.

I feel gratitude and empowerment when I take care of myself these days, not selfish guilt, but it took reframing my thoughts, repeatedly. Of course I still forget to make myself a top priority sometimes. There are always improvements to be made, but I am confident (another new development) that I will continue to make necessary changes and seek out information that helps me cope. In the mean time I am trying to find joy in small wonders. Any little victory is cause for celebration. Today, I’m happy that I have made progress since my diagnosis. Visible, written down, real progress. All the hard work has been overwhelming at times, it has even felt like I have slid backwards more than I have been able to put one foot in front of the other and keep climbing, but in one short year, the small changes I have made have taken me a long way from not knowing if I wanted to be here in a year, to planning for the next five, ten, twenty years of my life. I am even starting a business with a close friend, something I thought was ripped out of my grasp by illness which has actually become much more possible because of the life adjustments I have made to accommodate the chronic pain that dogs my every move.

It just proves that accepting and processing what illness means for me personally, minus the guilty nagging voice in the back of my head, has made all the difference. I think others around me may be frustrated by how little I can seem to accomplish in a certain amount of time, but I now realize that this isn’t their journey. It’s my journey, at my pace, and that’s healthier than continuing to constantly feel like a failure for struggling to keep up with everyone around me. I don’t have a magic finish line that I can get to and be “recovered”. The best I can do is the best I can do, end of story. I will work with what I’ve been given, and I will be grateful for what I can do on any given day. Sometimes that means just breathing in and out for hours, nothing else, and sometimes it means charging at life like I don’t know what pain and illness even are.

 

Geography Cannot Stop Spoonies From Finding Each Other

Moongazer commented recently that it doesn’t matter where we are geographically, we spoonies can still find and comfort each other no matter where in the world we are, and I couldn’t agree with her more.

In fact, getting to network with people who live with and work around other health systems is beneficial to all of us. We all need to know what specific problems our spoonie friends in other countries have to face. None of us should have to fight the system alone. Ever. Together we can solve complex problems within our healthcare systems, but it takes a lot of networking and a willingness to learn what others are up against, especially in countries where it is very hard to have an invisible illness. I know it’s hard everywhere, but I also realize that I am extremely lucky to live in the US, even if it means I have to wait five years for disability to be approved, and my healthcare kinda sucks, and my pills are extremely expensive and the treatments that will most benefit me are either non-FDA approved (read: EXPENSIVE and hard to find and makes you look suspicious on your medical record), or they are off limits because of this crazed witch hunt involving chronic pain patients and opiate use. A topic for many more blog posts, for sure, but not the topic of this post.

Bottom line, others have it harder than I do by far. I don’t just mean that others are in more pain or have more broken bodies than mine, although that is also very true. I do mean that many fellow spoonies have no roof over their head, no access to the internet, no support networks, no disability to even try filing for, no access to any treatment or meds, and often no access to diagnostics either. The minor annoyances in my life, like not being taken seriously, is a major roadblock for someone who still needs a diagnosis, still needs at least one doctor to take them seriously and at least try to help them. What about places where new chronic pain research has not been circulated? So much of our knowledge of where the pain comes from and how real it is have changed, but without the benefit of that knowledge, many suffer inhumane hospitalizations for psychiatric disorders they do not have.

Moongazer’s sweet comment also reminded me of how my psychiatrist asked me if I knew where my blogging family lived and I looked at her like she was the crazy one, but the question also caught me off guard; I felt suddenly so defensive of all of you. We are not some mass hysteria, thinking everything is a conspiracy and no one in real life understands us. Instead it is more like huddling together for warmth with people I am actually proud to call my family, only on the internet. It is a chance to read about others who handle pain differently, to get to know them through their clever words and their important stories. It is a chance to comfort those who are newer to the chronic pain community, and reach out to people who I have admired as writers for years. Who could pass that up? Not I!

Why does it even matter? I have friends that live right down the block that I talk to way less than you guys! I also talk to my family less than I talk to fellow spoonies. I don’t mean for that to sound sad or complainer-y, but just that it is so amazing to have contact with a vast array of talented, witty, and inspirational individuals who do not force me to justify myself and who accept me as I hope to learn to accept myself.

I was very lonely, I won’t debate that, but I didn’t come here specifically to meet new friends. In fact, I thought I would be the worst whiner, off in the corner, unable to meet anyone because I was too bitter and angry. Being around people who understand has washed away the empty, bitter angriness, and replaced it with joy and determination. That is what my blogging family means to me, and so much more. I am beyond grateful for your support, patience, and kindness as I work through things that many of you have figured out long ago. It is such an honor to be allowed to learn from and reach out to others who live with chronic illness or chronic pain, and to see firsthand how strong we truly are together. ❤ ❤ ❤

Though I have to admit, now that I’ve been asked, I am curious as to how far apart we are spread. I would love to know what state or country everyone is from! I’m a proud resident of Oregon. The Pacific Northwest is beautiful and won’t let me leave for too long, though I’ve lived in Massachusetts and Indiana as well. I was born here and I love this state!

Drop me a quick comment and let me know where you live, I can’t wait to see where we all are from.

The Long Term Effects of Chronic Pain

Just another short and sweet, easy to print explanation of what even minor long-term untreated chronic pain can do to a person. A person without any other troubles or illnesses. Most of the issues discussed in this article are less life-ending types of chronic pain, but that just serves to further reinforce the point that any kind of pain if left untreated is unhealthy; it can trigger long-term issues with depression and anxiety, even rewire the brain, and can make it difficult to process even mildly disruptive daily events, such as bad traffic.

That is not nothing.

So many of us are in kinds of pain that are so far beyond this little pamphlet from a pain clinic, but the people around us often are not as aware of the little things that go awry when pain stays for too long and is not recognized and treated. I thought this was kind of a nice review for people who are new to thinking about or dealing with illnesses that involve never-ending agony.

Sorry, ignore me, I’m still not able to get this flare up under control, and it’s starting to scare me when I read about others who had their “Big One” in the onset years of their illness that lasted 6-12 months.

Do. Not. Want.

Even a good day is a fight for every positive thought; every scrap of willpower woven together so tightly just to do normal people tasks, inside my own home. On a good day.

Here’s the article:

The Long-Term Effects of Untreated Chronic Pain

Even minor pain, such as a stubbed toe or a paper cut, is unpleasant but that pain fades relatively quickly. Imagine being in pain that never fades, or that fades only to come back a few hours later. What would that do to a person? This is what people with chronic pain have to deal with every day.

Chronic pain, a diagnosis including arthritis, back pain, and recurring migraines, can have a profound effect on a person’s day to day life when it goes untreated. People dealing with ongoing or long-term pain can become irritable, short-tempered, and impatient, and with good reason. Constant pain raises the focus threshold for basic functioning, which leaves the pained person with a greatly reduced ability to find solutions or workarounds to even relatively mundane problems. Something like a traffic jam, which most people would be mildly annoyed by but ultimately take in stride, could seriously throw off the rhythm of someone who is putting forth so much effort just to get through the day.

After a while, pain wears a person down, draining their energy and sapping their motivation. They sometimes attempt to limit social contact in an effort to reduce stress and to decrease the amount of energy they have to spend reacting to their environment. Eventually, many people with chronic pain develop depression-like symptoms: lack of interpersonal interaction, difficulty concentrating on simple tasks, and the desire to simplify their life as much as possible, which often manifests as seeking isolation and quiet. Sleeping often makes the pain less intrusive, and that combined with the exhaustion that pain induces means that it isn’t uncommon for a person to start sleeping upwards of ten hours a day.

Some recent studies have also shown that chronic pain can actually affect a person’s brain chemistry and even change the wiring of the nervous system. Cells in the spinal cord and brain of a person with chronic pain, especially in the section of the brain that processes emotion, deteriorate more quickly than normal, exacerbating many of the depression-like symptoms. It becomes physically more difficult for people with chronic pain to process multiple things at once and react to ongoing changes in their environment, limiting their ability to focus even more. Sleep also becomes difficult, because the section of the brain that regulates sense-data also regulates the sleep cycle. This regulator becomes smaller from reacting to the pain, making falling asleep more difficult for people with chronic pain.

Untreated pain creates a downward spiral of chronic pain symptoms, so it is always best to treat pain early and avoid chronic pain. This is why multidisciplinary pain clinics should be involved for accurate diagnosis and effective intervention early in the course of a painful illness – as soon as the primary care provider runs out of options that they can do themselves such as physical therapy or medications. However, even if the effects of chronic pain have set in, effective interdisciplinary treatment may significantly reduce the consequences of pain in their lives. There are any number of common treatments, which include exercise, physical therapy, a balanced diet, and prescription pain medication. Ultimately, effective treatment depends on the individual person and the specific source of the pain. One thing is very clear, however: the earlier a person begins effective treatment, the less the pain will affect their day-to-day life.In addition to making some symptoms more profound, the change in brain chemistry can, create new ones, as well. The most pronounced of these are anxiety and depression. After enough recurring pain, the brain rewires itself to anticipate future bouts, which makes patients constantly wary and causes significant anxiety related to pain. Because chronic pain often mimics depression by altering how a person’s brain reacts to discomfort and pain, chronic pain often biologically creates a feeling of hopelessness and makes it more difficult to process future pain in a healthy way. In fact, roughly one third of patients with chronic pain develop depression at some point during their lifetime.

via The Long-Term Effects of Untreated Chronic Pain – Integrative Pain Center of Arizona.

Personally I think that depression statistic should be a lot higher… severe chronic pain almost always manifests some form of depression/anxiety/ptsd, although of course there will always be exceptions.

The number would certainly be higher if stigma against mental illnesses were lessened and people felt free to come to their healthcare practitioners with issues relating to depression without fear of being told to take a pill and get over it, or worse; threat of hospitalization.

Many of us have run the wheel before and we don’t need people mistaking our pain for what it is not, so we keep it mostly inward unless we find someone who really understands the myriad issues surrounding chronic pain, disability, and illness. Bottling it up wouldn’t be such a frequent reaction to stress, depression, and anxiety if we lived with a different cultural attitude toward mental and invisible illnesses.

But that’s for another post.

Wishing everyone a low pain day, with extra energy. ❤

‘Faking’ or ‘Malingering’ or ‘Exaggerated Pain Behaviour’

HealthSkills Blog

words!!

It’s amazing how often health providers get asked directly or indirectly whether someone experiencing pain is ‘faking’ it. The short answer is the most accurate – we can’t tell. We’re not lie detectors, there is no ‘gold standard’ to work out whether someone is pretending or not, and the question is based on erroneous thinking about pain and pain behaviour.

I can almost feel the spluttering at my last sentence from some readers!

Let’s look at this more closely.

Remember the biopsychosocial model of pain states that the experience of pain and pain behaviour is influenced by three broad groups of factors: the biomedical/biophysical factors such as extent of tissue disruption at the periphery (or site of trauma), neurological changes of transmission and transduction (throughout the peripheral and central nervous system), and disturbance of the neuromatrix.

At the same time, there are psychological factors such as the level of…

View original post 1,225 more words

Pledge to Blog For Mental Health

Blog For Mental Health http://blogformentalhealth.com/ is an official project set up to help raise awareness for Mental Health education through the stories we share on our blogs. The aim is to educate and eradicate stigma. To become a part of the project, all you need to do is write a post and take the BFMH pledge.

“I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2015 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.”

I found this little encouraging poster for those of us with chronic pain or chronic illness experiencing some of that unpleasant guilt factor:

This pledge to Blog for Mental Health is perfect for me, as I am always attempting to combat the stigma that chronic illness carries, especially that which is lobbied against chronic pain patients. Much of what is thrown at me by way of an excuse for a doctor or nurse to not treat my pain is that my anguish is “all in my head” and therefore they have no responsibility to help me. I think that’s bullcrap, even if it were “just in my head”, where does a doctor who is not a psychiatrist or psychologist or any mental health professional at all, get off deciding that arbitrarily? It seems like having a psychiatric disorder severe enough to cause me to feel severe pain for no reason whatsoever, pain coming purely from my thought process; that wouldn’t be the kind of issue a doctor should just brush off so arrogantly, so hurtfully. What those doctors, one after another, were really saying was “you just need to toughen up and get over it, or you must be faking your problems or exaggerating a lot.” How much trust do you have in the healthcare professional who has sympathy for neither physical nor mental pain? Zero, the answer is most definitely ZERO.

Mental health and chronic illness go hand in hand, especially when pain is involved. It automatically becomes more important and more difficult to maintain our self-worth and sense of value. There is inevitable guilt, grief, and even moments of complete terror and helplessness to be worked through when living a life with chronic illness that sets limitations on us and impacts our daily life. It changes everything to be sick. In light of all that upheaval, it seems pretty clear that we cannot fully achieve the kind of healing we are looking for, whether that is complete recovery or simple acceptance, if we don’t address our conditions from every possible angle, with a major focus on supporting mental well-being for those managing chronic conditions.

I do try to be as emotionally honest as possible in this blog, but from now on I will be paying extra attention to making sure I fully and accurately convey the feelings that I am truly dealing with, rather than the feelings I wish I was having. That will force me to start identifying my own emotions more, which can only be a good thing as it will help me discover patterns and triggers, which is a major goal of mine this year.

In addition to taking the pledge to Blog for Mental Health, I promise to spend more time reading and commenting on fellow mental health bloggers’ work, and will seek out new research and interesting coping techniques, while striving to be more open about my own mental health journey in the process.

To kick this off, it seems logical that I state clearly that in addition to my many other invisible illnesses, my diagnoses include several anxiety disorders (well, more like all of them…), PTSD, depression, and ADHD. There’s more, I feel like, but I’m distracted by the fact that I usually don’t like to write down that I have depression or PTSD. I have always believed that they are my fault, some massively shameful character flaw that I could (and should) just ignore until they go away. That view has changed, but it still doesn’t sink in that I do not need to feel guilty or ashamed of those parts of myself. Slowly, ever so slowly, I’m relearning everything I thought I knew about mental health and I am getting used to taking it easier on myself in the process. I didn’t choose mental illness, or chronic pain, but I am doing the best with what I have been given.

I’m honored to take part in the Blog For Mental Health 2015 project. Check out the BFMH website and take the pledge!

To celebrate being involved with this wonderful project, I will be updating my Resources page with several mental health subsections with support groups, research websites, and anything else useful that I can dig up around the web.

Hope this finds you in a low pain day, beautiful spoonies. ❤

Being Sad Doesn’t Make You a Leper

With a chronic illness or two (or five), it can feel, especially at first, like all mental growth and development is in limbo, that it is all so beyond you. Your ability to focus, care, be motivated/inspired, or be fully present in life is even suspended, and it takes a huge amount of effort to immerse yourself in any part of your day, from work to free time, pain can be so overriding that it even becomes difficult to focus on your significant other’s needs like you used to, or even to be aware of them. You feel terrible about these things, we all do. No one likes to have to compare our old selves to our new selves post chronic-illness.

And I respect that, very much so, and do not want to take away from the reality of those moments. Though I often try to emphasize the positive on this blog, I will be honest, there days when I have to write the positive message I want to say over and over again until I really believe it, or skip the “fake it till you make it” approach and wait to post something until I feel less cynical about life. I am often stumped by my own depression, my own guilt. My illnesses and pain often overwhelm me and leave me so hopeless I can’t even bear to write about it. I never want to trivialize the absolute difficulty of living in constant, unrelenting pain that threatens to burn you alive with its intensity. During times when I feel that terrible and dysfunctional in every way, I tend to shut down, pouring my energy into worry, fear of rejection, and often anger, among other negative emotions. I do not believe it is anyone’s “fault” if they feel upset about something. There is always, always, always a reason for why people feel and act the way they do, and though that may not excuse behavior that is harmful towards others, it also provides a framework for starting to understand those in all stages of recovery or maintenance with a chronic illness. Just because some of us happen to be really good at dealing with pain, and some of us do not handle it as well, does not make those of us who are struggling any less worthy of love or admiration for where we are in our life and what it has taken us to get there. It also does not give someone who is in a better place mentally, or who feels like they are in a better place, the right to demerit someone who is just starting out on this journey, or someone who is picking themselves up from the depths of hell for the 42nd time and trying again, or even someone who isn’t yet aware of the path in front of them and can only focus on their own misery all of the time. These are all stages of the same state of existing and trying to thrive with a chronic illness. We are no better or worse than anyone else in pain, or bedbound, or learning to walk again, or even than someone who has given up, spiralled deeper and deeper into the sadder side of illness. No one wants to suffer. We were not born aiming for misery. At no point did someone walk up to us and sell us this illness, we did not choose it, we would do anything to be better, and many of have done everything. This is hard. Bottom line. You are allowed to have days, weeks, months, years, where you feel like a failure. You are allowed to grieve, hurt, or be miserable. You are allowed to scream, cry, or feel the hollow, numb, hopeless apathy wash over you for a time. These are your emotions, you are supposed to feel both highs and lows, and all things in between.

No one gets to tell you that you aren’t dealing with your illness in the best possible way for you, even your doctor’s advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt and a deep knowledge of what is right for you, in a long-term sense. Listening to your intuition is confidence boosting, I promise. We are all doing our best, even if the whole world makes you feel like a scab on a wound stuck on the back of society, that is not our fault, and it is not forever! Nothing is worse than being stuck in the negative side of emotions, and on top of that, also feeling guilty for your own disordered thoughts.

Dear spoonies, you are doing the best you can. Please, please, try to take some comfort in the fact that there are people out there who know how hard you’re working, how every single day is a massive achievement, and how determined you really are underneath the tears, the desperation, and the bad habits that will not be dealt with right now.

You don’t have to think positive all the time. You can be loved anyway, no matter what side of the emotional spectrum you are currently leaning towards. You are still worth just as much when you are sad as when you are happy, so please don’t feel like just because you are depressed, you are worthless. Depression is a part of this. A study from 2008 at Northwestern University shows how pain actually changes our brains, and it takes some time to adjust to that change and figure out how to work around what you have been given. We are all different, there is no formula for everyone to achieve optimum happiness, and anyone that insists there is might not be as brilliant as they appear.

CHRONIC PAIN HARMS THE BRAIN

In a new study, investigators at the Feinberg School of Medicine have identified a clue that may explain how suffering long-term pain could trigger other pain-related symptoms.

– See more at: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2008/02/chronicpain.html#sthash.dRdjvMuf.dpuf

Someone who tells you that it is possible to be chronically ill your whole life without dealing with bouts of depression, obviously hasn’t suffered any major trauma in their life, either that or they are in some deep denial. Whatever the reason for their skewed logic, don’t listen to that crap. Illness can be traumatizing, but you are safe in thinking your thoughts, no one has dominion over what you feel, you are in charge, you are allowed to experience the ups and the downs in life without censorship. Just in case you don’t have a safe place to be yourself in all of your disease’s ups and down, I am always honored to listen and encourage. No one should ever have to do this alone. Chronic illness is an adventure best enjoyed surrounded by those who understand and commend your quiet everyday courage just in getting up each morning to a body that does not behave and a life that is more stressful than most. I admire each and every one of you, even if we haven’t met yet, I know you’re trying and I’m rooting for you.

Beautiful spoonies, you all fight so hard, and that makes me so proud to be a part of this wonderful and supportive community. Even if we’re depressed from time to time, we are still fighting to be here in a meaningful way, and very much deserving of finding that. ❤

Follow me to Pinterest!

I have a confession, you guys:

I’m not proud of my addiction, but none-the-less, over five thousand people have chosen to enable my habit by following my Pinterest account, which I feel is basically a haphazard repository of my soul; the old me and the new me un-self-consciously coexist there, pinning images about chronic illness, gardening, art, preserving food, DIY beauty and health, style and materialism, homesteading, body image, a highly anticipated and hoped for future kiddo, and all my other dreams, projects, and ambitions.

I have over 30,000 pins since joining in 2011. Yes, I am ashamed! Yes, I know how much could I have actually accomplished in that time! A lot, probably, But when my brain was nothing but a pile of mush for over two years, Pinterest actually helped me live slightly more in the moment, it helped me make new connections in my mind and learn new skills, as well as taught me to dream about things beyond this second and the severe pain I feel. Pinterest in all it’s soul-sucking glory has been incredibly inspirational, and allowed me to feel like I am still putting creative energy out into the universe even when I don’t have the brain power or the physical ability to begin a craft or art project.

More importantly now, it has allowed me to visually document ideas for the future, get ideas for blog posts, and learn how to make pretty much anything from scratch! Recently I have slowed down my pinning, and now spend more time making sure links actually work and deleting ugly dresses on my street style board. But I am still very active there and will remain so as long as it is even a mild creative outlet for me during my worst times. I refer to it often for herbal remedies, recipes, DIY project advice, and just for the sake of aesthetic beauty in general. I cannot count the number of times I have tried my hand at various pinterest projects, not always successfully, either! 🙂

Funny though it sounds, looking at other artists’ work, finding new bloggers to follow, and meeting so many other chronically ill people on Pinterest gave me the confidence to start dreaming in color again before I even had the blog; to visualize future art projects, to not be afraid of new symptoms, to think of small business ideas, and to start my new life as a blogger, an artist, and a whole, happier human being in the face of chronic illness. Not that the site did anything for me that I couldn’t have done on my own with more effort, just that I was enjoying the company of others again, using technology as a tool for reaching out to people with similar interests at a time when words were failing me.

If you’ve got lots of time to spare, can’t find the words to express how your chronic illness has effected your life, are lacking in inspiration for a project or event, or if you want to know what to do with something instead of throwing it in a landfill, come on over to the Pinterest darkside, and don’t forget to follow me while you’re at it! Please don’t hesitate to say hi while you’re over there.

If you have a post with an image that you think would drive traffic to your site, I am happy to pin any of my fellow bloggers’ work to my Chronic Illness board, which has many, many more followers than this blog! Just drop me a comment below and a link to the post and the picture you feel will help bring people to your website. I’m happy to do multiple pins for blogs too! I know how helpful it can be to have a few links to your blog circulating around Pinterest. Wouldn’t it be nice if pinning was a job? Seriously, I would rock the hell out of that for a company’s social media department!