I'm surprised the author was able to determine (and remember) the names of all the drugs they were getting during this perceptional rollercoaster ride.
I suffer from chronic pain that is not curable. The doctors won't prescribe me any pain killers out of fear I could get addicted. Only alternative is a CBT therapy which can keep you stay relatively sane in that insane situation. Every day is a battle between should I just end it now or should I keep on surviving? I find it extremely depressing that medication that could potentially be helpful is illegal here and people seem to have no empathy whilst idea of popping heroin in hospital is totally fine. You probably know where I am getting at... I have tried cannabis but I never could get consistent quality or the same strain so 9 out of 10 times it didn't work and also made me feel impaired. On top of that at least 5 times I got sold spice (hemp flower sprayed with synthetic cannabinoids) and one time I got robbed at a knife point by a "dealer". I cannot understand why person who suffers like me has to go through that? What keeps me alive is Kratom which is also illegal but I can source it from a country where it is legal so the quality is consistent and good. I am saving money to move to a country where I can live as pain free as I can get but every day apart from the struggle I fear I'll become a criminal just because I want to live today. The system is fucked up and nobody cares.
When your decision of where you live is based on availability of drugs, I think there might be a serious problem lurking, which you may not even be consciously aware of. Good luck nonetheless.
> I suffer from chronic pain that is not curable. The doctors won't prescribe me any pain killers out of fear I could get addicted
Imagine that, they won't prescribe long term pain killers in case you might get addicted and take them for too long. It's insanity. I hope things work out for!
Your doctors are doing the right thing here. After a major surgery I was in rehab and on painkillers for the better part of a year. And when they finally cut the painkillers, it's not like the pain was gone. I thought I was in excruciating pain still, and by "thought" I mean it genuinely felt that way. But it's only now years later that I realized that the doctors were right. I eventually came to be perfectly fine without any painkillers, and it's not because the pain went away. The thing is that when you get used to the feeling of numbness painkillers create it exaggerates pain that's otherwise perfectly tolerable.
The whole experience somewhat ironically turned me sharply against drugs in general. In my case the doctor should have forcibly cut me off much earlier. He tried, I protested, he relented -- that was a major mistake on his part. These drugs change your perception of normalcy and make you lose context. And it seems like it's every other week there's yet some new discovery of a negative effect of drugs we thought (and many still think) to be relatively harmless such as paracetamol/acetaminophen/tylenol [1]. That link is just a google scholar search for paracetamol since 2014. Worth perusing if you'd like a reason to avoid that bottle or blister pack next time you have some sort of ache or pain.
I understand. I had prescription for Co-codamol, which is Codeine and paracetamol. I had been taking it for 8 months every day maximum dose. I have not had the urge to take more but I had become worried that paracetamol will destroy my liver so I stopped. It wasn't difficult but maybe because I substituted it with Kratom afterwards. I have been taking it daily for two years now. Sometimes it doesn't work and I have to resist the feeling to get more because that will change the tolerance even more and cause downwards spiral. I read a lot about addiction and how it works so I am careful.
I guess I am sad that what I take now is illegal and another alternative is also illegal. I know that any day my life can be over, not because my illness, but because someone would like to punish me for wanting to help myself with my symptoms.
Doctors tried all possible drugs that are prescribed for my illness (except stronger opiates) and none helped.
At this point I probably could do something in the direction of suing the government for denying me the right to health, but I have seen previous case where that gone nowhere for the claimants. Basically the system is setup that the illegal drugs are bad and your illness is just an excuse to take them. Absolute madness!
I genuinely and literally also thought I would be unable to function without the medication. This is precisely what I mean by losing context. In just the past few decades the US has seen skyrocketing prescription and use of everything from psychotropics/stimulants to pain killers of various sorts. And what do we have to show for it? Skyrocketing rates of mental illness (which are often side effects of said psychotropics), a drug addiction epidemic, and most tellingly of all - a decreasing life expectancy.
Our bodies are annoying creatures in that many things that make us feel good or even feel 'right' are in reality absolutely terrible for us. Add a profit motive into making us feel good, let alone paired with some rather less than ethical players, and it becomes a very twisted system.
You could ask them about the potential to be prescribed a dissociative drug instead of an opioid. I have heard that they can be very helpful in regards to chronic pain.
Over the course of couple of years I went through all possible drugs the doctors could think of. Some worked but side effects outweighed the benefits. In terms of side effects Co-codamol (Codeine and paracetamol) was best but they didn't want to prescribe a version without paracetamol. Once consultant even suggested that I am making this up and I just want to get opiates and he won't fall for that. This was heartbreaking and since that point I have not asked for any treatment that relates to opiates. I have made a complaint against this consultant but the hospital dismissed it and didn't consider my appeal even though by law they must. I just have no strength to go through courts I have too much on my plate.
Have you tried CBD? I run a CBD company (https://tryplainjane.com) and many of my customers are people with chronic pain. I'd love to send you some free product if you're open to trying it.
One thing that was rather news to me is how the body falls back into default behaviors of questionable merit. When I was younger, I thought that, afflicted with some pain, I would learn to ignore it and soldier on. Hoo boy.
Turns out, chronic pain, when the prospects seem bad, drains your motivation away (even more so with functional neural problems, which simply make you feel like crap 100% of the time). Now, if you happen to be of procrastinating type before that, you're left with zero motivation. Your mind is kinda hazy in the mornings, so you have to rely on your habits to carry you through. Every movement requires effort now. For a lot of illnesses, physical therapy is the right answer—and meanwhile, the instinct says to stay in the chair with a big breakfast and marathon BoJack Horseman.* Maybe later the mind will clear up a bit or the pain will ease up, and you'll swing dumbbells around or go outside. Oh what do you know, it's evening already.
This regime made my physique problematic in the first place! Why don't I have an instinct that would tell me to move around and exercise?
And this is cumulative, of course—I should be making some better habits for tomorrow, but instead I'm dropping everything that seems of no immediate importance, which is like all that makes life healthy and interesting.
So, I once believed that conscious effort would carry me through life—but if you look into pretty basic psychology, the ape brain is way more firm at making day-to-day decisions. It's better to have habits that will work for you in hard times. The sentimental books about how you need to ‘overcome yourself’ were right, only they were distant and nonspecific.
* Note that marathoning BoJack Horseman is definitely recommended in different circumstances.
The conscious mind is weak and will power alone is a laughable force, because it is an illusion. You have to use both logic and emotion. Logic when emotion is weak and emotion when logic fails. For me, it is about tricking your mind into being completely convinced there is no stopping the coming suffering (exercise, pain, whatever). You can call that habits (it is) but how you form and think of the habit is different if you are a procrastinator. I have broken bones and dealt with suffering like Bunnies (not as acutely extreme). There is a peculiar thing analytical people do with suffering and pain and it can be counterproductive. The overanalysis of it and trying to logic it all out. To cope through total understanding. Some of the time it is just easier to use and manipulate your own emotion, this can have a profound effect on reprogramming the brain back to a more normal state compared to trying to reason it all out from a mental perspective on recovery.
Suffering from chronic pain myself, I had two main thoughts when reading this:
1) "the realization that my life has changed for the worse in irreversible ways" - This is a dangerous perspective. Yes, life has changed, but if you focus on 'for the worse', you step onto a path that leads to depression in 90% of chronic pain patients. I instead focus on what I still can do. I might never be an athlete again, but I can walk. I can take short hikes in the mountains. I've changed my hobbies from an active collection of martial arts, biking, and hiking, into more sedate things like painting and woodworking. I celebrate staying active for half a day instead of dwelling on the fact that I used to be able to move all day. Much of your ability to adapt to chronic pain is mental, not physical, and this is exactly why CBT is recommended as a therapy - to help you to frame your life in positive, productive behaviors that keep you going in the right direction.
2) Everyone's pain is different. There is no single answer for how people deal with it (or fail to deal with it). This post sounded to me less like someone trying to communicate with their audience, and more like someone thinking it through for themselves. So while I had mixed reactions to the details of it all, I think the act of having put it together is likely a healthy move, so I appreciate the effort to have done so.
Well said. Focus on what you can do. I hat 3 knee surgeries and my Dr said I wouldn't walk, but I didn't listen and walking is what I do. 1+ hour a day. Without it, I have more knee pain.
Experiment. Try different things, though try and varying them one at a time, so you can know what has an impact.
I never think about the fact that I can't run or ski or whatever.
Not sure, TBH. I think he said I would be mobile, but my 1+ hours a day walking was probably not possible. I knew from after the 2nd surgery that it help, so I completely ignored him.
We put so much trust in doctors, so I agree, who knows how many people he's harmed with that attitude.
This is a great attitude. You do what you can. In my younger days I felt I was indestructible. Other than a torn ACL from wake boarding, I never got hurt doing all sorts of sports from the mundane to the extreme. Even my ACL healed 100%.
Then, I herniated a disc in my lower back. I think it was from playing basketball (not really extreme heh). The pain was literally the worst thing I have ever felt. My back didn't hurt, but my leg from the hip to the foot felt like it was on fire or the skin was being pealed off. I couldn't sleep, walk, get in/out of a car, stand upright, lay flat, etc... Luckily a back injection got the inflammation and pain under control. But, my life going forward has forever changed. No more basketball. No more heavy deadlifts (I was deadlifting in the 500#s, now I stay 225# or less). No more heavy squatting. No more running (afraid of the impact). I do what I can and work from there, happy that modern medicine gave me a chance.
I just had surgery on my l4 and l5 herniated discs after a year of impinged nerves. Highly recommend seeing if surgery is right for you, it was life changing for me.
Thanks. Back surgery is something I consider last resort. Luck for me, a single shot got the inflammation reversed. Now I do plenty of stretching and make sure that I always bend properly, even when doing something simple like putting on my socks in the morning.
I too herniated a disc (MTB racing), which in turn created a lot of scar tissue, which in turn pressed on nerves leaving me with a bad back and leg pain and numbness/pins and needles.
In the beginning, physiotherapy got it to a stage where I was able to ride again and function normally (albeit with pain and stiffness) and painkillers helped in this phase.
After 5 or so years, I went to a doctor because the remaining pain (especially the occasional "hard pinch" of a nerve would almost take my legs out from under me) was getting to me. He advice was to me that surgery is pretty much always a worse option in cases like mine because scar tissue does eventually fade (as it does elsewhere on your body) and it probably takes a good 10 years for that to happen.
I did the injury at the end of 2010 and, it seems the doctor was spot on as in the last year or so my pain had almost entirely faded away.
My doc said the same thing about time and scar tissue. He also mentioned movement helps things reabsorb. The injection on my spine was a way to ease the inflammation and give the body time to do it’s thing. It’s been 16 months since the original injury and my foot still tingles sometimes. The doc also said that tingling will be the last thing to go.
I’m fine with tingling forever as long as I can avoid that pain. It’s hard to describe nerve pain to people who haven’t had it. My ACL surgery was relatively painless compared to my sciatic leg pain.
Similar I ruptured a lumbar disk climbing when I was 25/26. I was also squatting and deadlifting heavy at the time. I went from the strongest time of my life to the weakest where I couldn't even tie my shoes without extreme pain. That lasted about three years where I gradually got better over time.
I feel healthy now and can walk, run, have excellent mobility. No more sciatic pain, some tightness in the lumbar if I'm careless.
I don't squat or deadlift at all anymore and focus more on calisthenics (pullups, pushups). I do a lot of running and it doesn't bother me.
But for those three years, things were dark. I brooded almost every day on my injury.
I couldn’t imagine how hard 3 years must have been. I dealt with mine for about 5 weeks before I got an injection. It was slowly getting better on its own, but going for years would have been tough. I’m glad you made it through.
I do a ton of calisthenics, and thought about stopping squats and dead’s completely. The reason I didn’t is that they enforce good posture and the proper way to pick things up. They also strengthen all the muscles that will help keep me from being hurt again. With that said, I worked incredibly slowly back to where I am. From no weight to now. And, if I’m not feeling it that day, I have no problem just doing calisthenics or riding the bike. Ego be damned.
Those are the standard tools of distraction which I employed in earlier years. I actually mean standing quietly still and shifting as much 'internal attention' as possible to the injured toe.
The most profound dilemma to me from my own outcome of pain is how "people who haven't lived the specific pain" are calling the shots. How illnesses resulting in physical & psychological pain are handled by treatments tailored by people who haven't experienced the pain. Similar with the allocation of finances and the perception of how one should adapt their outlook on life; based on how outsiders of the experience looking in will decide on what's best. It's comparable to how a victim is so easily coerced & manipulated in a lesser state and when having faith in persons with the status of attempting to help. Personally, I would trade my life in a heart beat for without daily pain and never the experience. Psychologically I can understand why people look to feel grateful for insight or to make people educated about pain. Sadly, I think it's just an irrational attempt in making one try to accept the unfortunate circumstances from the cruel will of the universe.
This has been a rough couple years personally and professionally for me. My dad almost died last March from multiple pulmonary embolisms. My mom had breast cancer for the second time. The Highrise drama. But the real weird underlying thing has been this constant chronic pain and other symptoms. I could barely move my left shoulder without a ton of pain. I stopped pushing doors open with my left arm for example to deal with it. I also couldn’t walk up stairs without pain. My knees were awful. I chalked it all up to either stress or just mid life getting old. Then I started getting a ton of fluid in my ears. I thought it was some allergy that I just couldn’t fully combat with antihistamines. It made me feel like I head a head cold. Cloudy. A little dizzy. And this just went on for a couple years.
I thought 40 was just my inevitable peak and it all sucks from here. Life took on a real grey hue.
Well. My wife made us go on some “anti inflammatory” diet. No gluten. No dairy. No sugar. No alcohol. Low carb. No snacking. I moaned about it for days.
After 5 days my body was dramatically better. All the joint pain disappeared. The fluid in my ears is either gone or drastically more manageable right now.
I’m still on a similar diet today but not as strict. And I remain feeling really good. I can’t believe I was living with all this chronic pain this long and could have just changed up my diet.
So I drop this story here because I bet there’s some other folks out there that could see some impact in their life just being a bit more aware of their diet.
For me I have no idea what the real cause is. Sugar? Alcohol? Dairy? I’ve heard from others they have a sensitivity to a food and had similar symptoms. I took a food sensitivity test at everlywell.com which mentions a high sensitivity to brewers yeast. So maybe it’s that. Maybe my body just needed a detox to reboot. Who knows. But I feel great.
(The diet I went on was in an ebook from a healthy heart Facebook group https://m.facebook.com/groups/thehappyheartproject/) but it isn’t magical or mysterious. You can just figure it out yourself by staying away from the things I mentioned above for 5 days.
I'm always glad to read of another person getting multiple benefits from low/ish carb eating. I live with chronic pain from a spinal infection and also happen to have disordered eating issues. Low carb was _an_ answer to both of those problems. It's not magic, I won't hail it as the one solution to myriad problems but my inflammatory markers, blood sugar markers (reversed t2d), weight (lost 200lbs) and ability to live with a modicum of normality (was bed bound) don't lie.
For anyone that likes complex problem solving and wants to start down the low carb road, I cannot recommend Ivor Cummins'[1] and Dr. Jeff Gerber's[2] work on diabetes and cholesterol enough.
With the restricted diets, compliance is extremely hard to achieve in a lot of cases. If you go to social events, work in an office, etc., it will always come down to being offered restricted foods and having to forcefully reject them. For many folks food becomes a religious thing and they decide(maybe not consciously) they'd rather die than change.
Fortunately my issues to date seem to be controlled with heavy vitamin D3 supplementation, so I don't have to do a hard restriction on anything.
I’m currently 1 week into recovery from a painful shredded (the surgeon’s words) patellar tendon and repair.
On reading certain passages, my afflicted leg (and only that leg) got tingles and goosebumps and the rest of me just... cringed... in horrified empathy. I feel ill just thinking about OP’s pain, and knowing, as OP does, that this is nothing compared to the pain of certain other maladies makes me wonder how anyone can bear it.
I have near constant neck pain and have done every route I can think to mitigate,manage,cure or deal with it. The strangest part is it switched sides randomly. I've tracked/logged it multiple times and can make no sense of why it switches. I think I need to track more things I'm doing to see what's related to it... neck surgery, stim, acupuncture, multiple types of therapies, heart, cold, massage, etc.. all give negligible results.
I'm sorry to hear you have constant pain. I deal with constant neck pain, and I can tell you two things that really, really helped (after trying pretty much everything and even considering surgery). The first one is reading "Healing Back Pain" by John Sarno. As an engineer the prospect of reading a book to manage pain sounded quite dumb, but I can assure you it removed 90% of the pain. The other thing that worked was taking 0.5mg Clonazepam whenever the pain got worse. I got the prescription from a doctor saying that it works for some patients with chronic pain.
Please do yourself a favor and read that book, I hope it helps (it did help a very skeptical me one year ago).
I had a shoulder surgery last year. I definitely learned about constant pain and some tips for dealing with it (with and without drugs).
Some random observations:
Meditation can help. My pain was more connected with my emotional state than I expected (much worse when stressed and much better when distracted by an enjoyable experience). Pain and negative emotions reinforce each other. Narcotics often break the concentration that makes meditation reduce pain. Nevertheless sometimes you gotta load up on narcotics so you can attempt to get the sleep your body needs to heal.
In my case I went through about 40 percacet the first week. But took 5-6 weeks for the next 40, and then I was off the heavy stuff and stuck to ibuprofin.
I managed to injure the epithilium on both eyes and developed corneal lesions after a particularly bad bout of dry eye. I spent more than two weeks at home, hunkering in the dark due to photosensitivity, without any pain medications. The pain was intense enough that it felt like needles going directly into my eyes, with radiating pain that wrapped all the way around my head. With antibiotic eyedrops and therapeutic contact lenses, my eyes were able to heal, but for a time I was at risk of blindness. I sympathize with anyone who has chronic pain, especially the psychological aspect of facing a life severely diminished.
I live with chronic pain. (ankylosing spondylitis)
I take prescription NSAIDs and other drugs for a long time. Also a lot of acetaminophen per day. (Which I carefully monitor.) I also take, occasionally, narcotic pain killers (hydrocodone). Next January (2019) will be ten years since I added hydrocodone to the drugs I use for this.
But it is a tool. Nothing more. I take it only when I need it. I don't have any predictable usage pattern. It is for occasional use only. I have a very healthy fear of taking it at all, but if I'm in enough pain, I'll overcome that and take some. I have a good life and don't want to screw it up with narcotic pain killers. I have never had any resistance when asking for a refill. Neither my primary doctor nor arthritis specialist are worried that I'm taking too much.
If anything, I've noticed that in the last couple years, I've slowed down my usage a little bit. (Measured by time between refills.)
I think in pain management, the first thing is "learn to live with it", and then, "there are good drugs for days when it is really bad". (just IMO) I'm always looking for the lowest dose I can take that will be effective for any particular episode. I don't want to build up a tolerance. And I suppose I must not have built up a tolerance in ten years of occasional use.
I haven't become addicted. But I also don't drink alcohol. Or smoke. Or use very much caffeine. Maybe that is related, or maybe not.
I would say that hydrocodone has improved my quality of life. I get out and do things I sometimes wouldn't otherwise do.
Last year I was in Colorado and tried some, .... uh, ... products. First, I thought they were pretty pricey compared to hydrocodone, which costs me only $5 for a bottle of 30. Second, while they did help some, I didn't think they were nearly as effective. The hydrocodone is more like a nuclear weapon for pain.
I'm in my mid 30s and have had migraine headaches for well over a decade now. The pain is so intense and overwhelming at times tears flow, and I moan in the dark with the only hope that time will pass and it will eventually get better at some point. The headaches occur as frequently as multiple times a week, and can last for a whole day or days on end (the more severe ones are shorter lived).
I go to sleep with pain, and on many days wake up with pain. I have to hold down a job and take care of family, so I put on a wincing face and deal with it. I like to think I can mask the pain well, but my family tells me otherwise. I've tried medicines, injections, and countless remedies over the years and spent a bunch of money on doctors. But there is no reliable cure for me so far. I do all the usual things that people do at my stage in life, I laugh, I play, I go to work and do well ... but I don't think anyone really understands how much I have to kill of myself (my desires, my wish to be in a dark room with no noise and isolated, my wish to sit around and do nothing and just pass out with pain) to get thru each day. That has left me lonely, and a bit distrustful perhaps of people - though I try not to act on that thought.
A few years ago, I tried cannabis. Living in a state where it is illegal was a problem - both legally and with my job. I got a few different strains and experimented with it over the course of a few weeks. When I found the strain that worked, I cried. I cried so much. I was pain free in a way that I hadn't known in nearly 2 decades. I didn't even realize how much and where I was hurting. Apart from my head, every muscle in my body was hurting due to the constant strain of dealing with pain. And it was all gone. Gone. I felt like I was born again for a few days. And then it was over. I couldn't continue with it due to it being illegal. It was then I really understood how immoral having at a minimum cannabis not being allowed for medical purposes is. I don't know if it is a long term solution as I didn't have an opportunity to gather enough data and observations - but surely there is potential. I also didn't have any side effects, with the exception of "the munchies" - which is very real :).
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadYes, the chronic pain perhaps?
Imagine that, they won't prescribe long term pain killers in case you might get addicted and take them for too long. It's insanity. I hope things work out for!
The whole experience somewhat ironically turned me sharply against drugs in general. In my case the doctor should have forcibly cut me off much earlier. He tried, I protested, he relented -- that was a major mistake on his part. These drugs change your perception of normalcy and make you lose context. And it seems like it's every other week there's yet some new discovery of a negative effect of drugs we thought (and many still think) to be relatively harmless such as paracetamol/acetaminophen/tylenol [1]. That link is just a google scholar search for paracetamol since 2014. Worth perusing if you'd like a reason to avoid that bottle or blister pack next time you have some sort of ache or pain.
[1] - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=paracetamol&as_ylo=2014
Our bodies are annoying creatures in that many things that make us feel good or even feel 'right' are in reality absolutely terrible for us. Add a profit motive into making us feel good, let alone paired with some rather less than ethical players, and it becomes a very twisted system.
Turns out, chronic pain, when the prospects seem bad, drains your motivation away (even more so with functional neural problems, which simply make you feel like crap 100% of the time). Now, if you happen to be of procrastinating type before that, you're left with zero motivation. Your mind is kinda hazy in the mornings, so you have to rely on your habits to carry you through. Every movement requires effort now. For a lot of illnesses, physical therapy is the right answer—and meanwhile, the instinct says to stay in the chair with a big breakfast and marathon BoJack Horseman.* Maybe later the mind will clear up a bit or the pain will ease up, and you'll swing dumbbells around or go outside. Oh what do you know, it's evening already.
This regime made my physique problematic in the first place! Why don't I have an instinct that would tell me to move around and exercise?
And this is cumulative, of course—I should be making some better habits for tomorrow, but instead I'm dropping everything that seems of no immediate importance, which is like all that makes life healthy and interesting.
So, I once believed that conscious effort would carry me through life—but if you look into pretty basic psychology, the ape brain is way more firm at making day-to-day decisions. It's better to have habits that will work for you in hard times. The sentimental books about how you need to ‘overcome yourself’ were right, only they were distant and nonspecific.
* Note that marathoning BoJack Horseman is definitely recommended in different circumstances.
1) "the realization that my life has changed for the worse in irreversible ways" - This is a dangerous perspective. Yes, life has changed, but if you focus on 'for the worse', you step onto a path that leads to depression in 90% of chronic pain patients. I instead focus on what I still can do. I might never be an athlete again, but I can walk. I can take short hikes in the mountains. I've changed my hobbies from an active collection of martial arts, biking, and hiking, into more sedate things like painting and woodworking. I celebrate staying active for half a day instead of dwelling on the fact that I used to be able to move all day. Much of your ability to adapt to chronic pain is mental, not physical, and this is exactly why CBT is recommended as a therapy - to help you to frame your life in positive, productive behaviors that keep you going in the right direction.
2) Everyone's pain is different. There is no single answer for how people deal with it (or fail to deal with it). This post sounded to me less like someone trying to communicate with their audience, and more like someone thinking it through for themselves. So while I had mixed reactions to the details of it all, I think the act of having put it together is likely a healthy move, so I appreciate the effort to have done so.
Experiment. Try different things, though try and varying them one at a time, so you can know what has an impact.
I never think about the fact that I can't run or ski or whatever.
I'm so very glad you ignored your doctor, but I wonder how many people out there didn't and never even tried to walk again after complex knee surgery.
We put so much trust in doctors, so I agree, who knows how many people he's harmed with that attitude.
Then, I herniated a disc in my lower back. I think it was from playing basketball (not really extreme heh). The pain was literally the worst thing I have ever felt. My back didn't hurt, but my leg from the hip to the foot felt like it was on fire or the skin was being pealed off. I couldn't sleep, walk, get in/out of a car, stand upright, lay flat, etc... Luckily a back injection got the inflammation and pain under control. But, my life going forward has forever changed. No more basketball. No more heavy deadlifts (I was deadlifting in the 500#s, now I stay 225# or less). No more heavy squatting. No more running (afraid of the impact). I do what I can and work from there, happy that modern medicine gave me a chance.
In the beginning, physiotherapy got it to a stage where I was able to ride again and function normally (albeit with pain and stiffness) and painkillers helped in this phase.
After 5 or so years, I went to a doctor because the remaining pain (especially the occasional "hard pinch" of a nerve would almost take my legs out from under me) was getting to me. He advice was to me that surgery is pretty much always a worse option in cases like mine because scar tissue does eventually fade (as it does elsewhere on your body) and it probably takes a good 10 years for that to happen.
I did the injury at the end of 2010 and, it seems the doctor was spot on as in the last year or so my pain had almost entirely faded away.
Just my little piece of anecdata.
I’m fine with tingling forever as long as I can avoid that pain. It’s hard to describe nerve pain to people who haven’t had it. My ACL surgery was relatively painless compared to my sciatic leg pain.
I feel healthy now and can walk, run, have excellent mobility. No more sciatic pain, some tightness in the lumbar if I'm careless.
I don't squat or deadlift at all anymore and focus more on calisthenics (pullups, pushups). I do a lot of running and it doesn't bother me.
But for those three years, things were dark. I brooded almost every day on my injury.
I do a ton of calisthenics, and thought about stopping squats and dead’s completely. The reason I didn’t is that they enforce good posture and the proper way to pick things up. They also strengthen all the muscles that will help keep me from being hurt again. With that said, I worked incredibly slowly back to where I am. From no weight to now. And, if I’m not feeling it that day, I have no problem just doing calisthenics or riding the bike. Ego be damned.
It seems to me that this is the function of pain.
If one could voluntarily embrace this process, would this make opioids less necessary and/or desirable?
It certainly would, but "embracing" the process of pain is an enormous mental and physical challenge.
Entire religions, for example, are devoted to separating the mind from the experience of the body. But this takes years of conscious effort.
The most profound dilemma to me from my own outcome of pain is how "people who haven't lived the specific pain" are calling the shots. How illnesses resulting in physical & psychological pain are handled by treatments tailored by people who haven't experienced the pain. Similar with the allocation of finances and the perception of how one should adapt their outlook on life; based on how outsiders of the experience looking in will decide on what's best. It's comparable to how a victim is so easily coerced & manipulated in a lesser state and when having faith in persons with the status of attempting to help. Personally, I would trade my life in a heart beat for without daily pain and never the experience. Psychologically I can understand why people look to feel grateful for insight or to make people educated about pain. Sadly, I think it's just an irrational attempt in making one try to accept the unfortunate circumstances from the cruel will of the universe.
I thought 40 was just my inevitable peak and it all sucks from here. Life took on a real grey hue.
Well. My wife made us go on some “anti inflammatory” diet. No gluten. No dairy. No sugar. No alcohol. Low carb. No snacking. I moaned about it for days.
After 5 days my body was dramatically better. All the joint pain disappeared. The fluid in my ears is either gone or drastically more manageable right now.
I’m still on a similar diet today but not as strict. And I remain feeling really good. I can’t believe I was living with all this chronic pain this long and could have just changed up my diet.
So I drop this story here because I bet there’s some other folks out there that could see some impact in their life just being a bit more aware of their diet.
For me I have no idea what the real cause is. Sugar? Alcohol? Dairy? I’ve heard from others they have a sensitivity to a food and had similar symptoms. I took a food sensitivity test at everlywell.com which mentions a high sensitivity to brewers yeast. So maybe it’s that. Maybe my body just needed a detox to reboot. Who knows. But I feel great.
(The diet I went on was in an ebook from a healthy heart Facebook group https://m.facebook.com/groups/thehappyheartproject/) but it isn’t magical or mysterious. You can just figure it out yourself by staying away from the things I mentioned above for 5 days.
For anyone that likes complex problem solving and wants to start down the low carb road, I cannot recommend Ivor Cummins'[1] and Dr. Jeff Gerber's[2] work on diabetes and cholesterol enough.
[1] https://twitter.com/FatEmperor
[2] https://twitter.com/JeffryGerberMD
Fortunately my issues to date seem to be controlled with heavy vitamin D3 supplementation, so I don't have to do a hard restriction on anything.
I tore ligaments in my knee several years ago. The paragraph about the accident was extremely hard to read and caused me actual physical discomfort!
On reading certain passages, my afflicted leg (and only that leg) got tingles and goosebumps and the rest of me just... cringed... in horrified empathy. I feel ill just thinking about OP’s pain, and knowing, as OP does, that this is nothing compared to the pain of certain other maladies makes me wonder how anyone can bear it.
Please do yourself a favor and read that book, I hope it helps (it did help a very skeptical me one year ago).
Some random observations:
Meditation can help. My pain was more connected with my emotional state than I expected (much worse when stressed and much better when distracted by an enjoyable experience). Pain and negative emotions reinforce each other. Narcotics often break the concentration that makes meditation reduce pain. Nevertheless sometimes you gotta load up on narcotics so you can attempt to get the sleep your body needs to heal.
In my case I went through about 40 percacet the first week. But took 5-6 weeks for the next 40, and then I was off the heavy stuff and stuck to ibuprofin.
My shoulder still hurts.
I take prescription NSAIDs and other drugs for a long time. Also a lot of acetaminophen per day. (Which I carefully monitor.) I also take, occasionally, narcotic pain killers (hydrocodone). Next January (2019) will be ten years since I added hydrocodone to the drugs I use for this.
But it is a tool. Nothing more. I take it only when I need it. I don't have any predictable usage pattern. It is for occasional use only. I have a very healthy fear of taking it at all, but if I'm in enough pain, I'll overcome that and take some. I have a good life and don't want to screw it up with narcotic pain killers. I have never had any resistance when asking for a refill. Neither my primary doctor nor arthritis specialist are worried that I'm taking too much.
If anything, I've noticed that in the last couple years, I've slowed down my usage a little bit. (Measured by time between refills.)
I think in pain management, the first thing is "learn to live with it", and then, "there are good drugs for days when it is really bad". (just IMO) I'm always looking for the lowest dose I can take that will be effective for any particular episode. I don't want to build up a tolerance. And I suppose I must not have built up a tolerance in ten years of occasional use.
I haven't become addicted. But I also don't drink alcohol. Or smoke. Or use very much caffeine. Maybe that is related, or maybe not.
I would say that hydrocodone has improved my quality of life. I get out and do things I sometimes wouldn't otherwise do.
Last year I was in Colorado and tried some, .... uh, ... products. First, I thought they were pretty pricey compared to hydrocodone, which costs me only $5 for a bottle of 30. Second, while they did help some, I didn't think they were nearly as effective. The hydrocodone is more like a nuclear weapon for pain.
I go to sleep with pain, and on many days wake up with pain. I have to hold down a job and take care of family, so I put on a wincing face and deal with it. I like to think I can mask the pain well, but my family tells me otherwise. I've tried medicines, injections, and countless remedies over the years and spent a bunch of money on doctors. But there is no reliable cure for me so far. I do all the usual things that people do at my stage in life, I laugh, I play, I go to work and do well ... but I don't think anyone really understands how much I have to kill of myself (my desires, my wish to be in a dark room with no noise and isolated, my wish to sit around and do nothing and just pass out with pain) to get thru each day. That has left me lonely, and a bit distrustful perhaps of people - though I try not to act on that thought.
A few years ago, I tried cannabis. Living in a state where it is illegal was a problem - both legally and with my job. I got a few different strains and experimented with it over the course of a few weeks. When I found the strain that worked, I cried. I cried so much. I was pain free in a way that I hadn't known in nearly 2 decades. I didn't even realize how much and where I was hurting. Apart from my head, every muscle in my body was hurting due to the constant strain of dealing with pain. And it was all gone. Gone. I felt like I was born again for a few days. And then it was over. I couldn't continue with it due to it being illegal. It was then I really understood how immoral having at a minimum cannabis not being allowed for medical purposes is. I don't know if it is a long term solution as I didn't have an opportunity to gather enough data and observations - but surely there is potential. I also didn't have any side effects, with the exception of "the munchies" - which is very real :).