Archive for the 'pain / disability' Category
October 29th, 2011 -- Posted in pain / disability |
As a “multiple years” chronic pain sufferer, I can no longer count or keep track of the number of times I have been asked to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I have done so at doctor’s appointments, hospital ER visits, etc.
And you know what I have discovered in this time?
One to 10 is not good enough!
I mean this in many different ways…
* It can be argued it doesn’t go high enough. If 10 is defined as being “the most pain you have ever felt in your life before now”, then your scale could go beyond 10. I really enjoy the comical pain scale depicted in the blog Hyperbole and a Half (it’s funny because it’s so true!!):
Emergency Room post with better pain scale
* Since different people have different pain histories and experiences, maybe not everyone should have the same starting (and maximum) end points. Kids who had experienced nothing but a bee-sting could rate from 1 to 10, but should this be the same scale for say, people who had been shot? Their 5 could be extremely excruciating whereas a child could be at an 8 and be fine.
* Not only that, but if one individual person changes what her or his “10″ is, any previously tracked pain becomes hard to compare to what is tracked from there on in. Someone could be experiencing the same actual pain, but it would have a different number now because something more painful has been experienced which bumps everything else down the line.
* Most importantly, the scale of 1 to 10 does not give us enough variation to notice sublte changes. When you are a chronic pain patient and your pain regularly sits at 7 to 9 out of 10 (I have not felt an average body pain level of less than 6 since March 2nd, 2008!), having just 3 numbers to rate your pain changes is totally inadequate. You start getting into halves and quarters and wanting to use decimal places, which people don’t expect.
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October 1st, 2011 -- Posted in family, massage/physio/chiro, pain / disability |
What is it they say about bad things coming in threes? Someone please tell me they stop there…
I updated the description of my pain/disability category to the following:
“After being hit twice by careless drivers (once in 2000, once in 2008), I’ve been left with permanent spinal injuries and with daily chronic pain. A 3rd collision in 2011 caused by another careless driver added to the psychological trauma and fear of being a magnet for bad luck.”
JUST what we needed right?! And this time I wasn’t alone in the car either, my husband and daughter were with me, so now they are hurting directly too, not just indirectly through losing my care and attention…
It’s hard to say what ranked higher on the scale of “freaked out”: my mind or my muscles… This newest collision was minor compared to my first time getting hit and was even maybe less of a “jolt” than the 2nd collision a few years ago. But it has taken all the work I’ve done on battling the fears of being out on the road and brought it backwards.
As for the muscles, everything has been very flared up. I went right to my massage therapist the day after we were struck and he said that even laying his hands gently allowed him to felt my muscles twitching. One session calmed them down, but even within that same afternoon, I could feel them acting up again.
So here we go again, adding something on top to recover from. I keep saying “Once I recover from __, I can get back to work recovering from ___”, but now things are stacked up SO high on top of one another, I don’t even know how to get through this pile or if it is even possible anymore!
My body and mind have been bashed at so much from all angles, they just feel like giving in and giving up. I’ve always been a fighter, but there’s only so much one person can take!!!
September 20th, 2011 -- Posted in pain / disability, people suck |
… why having disabilities turns your life all topsy-turvy and affects every little corner of it!
Reason #12,004,561: The pervasive need for us to have all of our “info” at our fingertips at all moments of the day.
This is not a problem for people who can easily make many trips up and down their stairs at home during the day. For me, the reality is, I lose access to a portion of things that I may need for the entire time I’m awake (which portion depends on where I am!). Other than a trip down in the morning and a trip up at bedtime, I do 1 more trip up and back during the day and that’s usually IT.
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