My Story (Part 2): Painful, Wasteful Days

 

My disability, my life, is chronic pain.

 

The pain is constant and nagging or searing and nauseous. Either way it is always eating away at my body and my mind, all day and every day; I only seem to get the briefest glimpses of respite and that is only an easing of the pain rather than it gone completely.

The more I do the more pain I am in, whether it is walking or sitting or travelling or housework.

 

Each time I do more I risk the pain flaring up so that anything I do hurts, really hurts, not just like that nagging toothache like pain. It is the kind of pain that makes you writhe on the floor in agony and then feel the need to reach for an ever increasing strength and amount of painkillers.

At the times of flare up any movement is a struggle and I need help with the simplest things, like getting dressed or making food or drink. It is times like these that I feel like a burden on my wife.

The pain is at its best when I do practically nothing; but then I feel that I am just wasting my life away. But I know what I need to do, so now a good day for me is a combination of rest and exercise, so that the pain will ease or at the least not be aggravated.

But, again, with sitting aggravating the pain, I must rest lying down, so that is what my life now seems to revolve around, as I lie down reading books, newspapers, watching television and writing a random blog…

And yet, despite all the lying around, I am never truly relaxed and comfortable: I am always aware of the pain and the need to move because if I do not the lying down will increase the pain too.

I must do particular exercises to ease and control the pain, as I have done for five years now, a combination of yoga, stretching, strengthening and cardiovascular exercise.

In addition to my daytime painkillers, I take further medication each night in order to ease the pain and help me sleep; if I do not, I have trouble sleeping. When the pain is at its worse I take more tablets and still that is not enough, each turn in bed aggravating the pain and waking me.

I feel, or maybe I know but I do not wish to recognise, that I will be lying down, exercising and taking ever increasing doses of medication for the rest of my life.