(August 20, 2023 at 6:58 am)arewethereyet Wrote: I have gotten to the point where I think pain is just the way it is. I had both breasts removed in 2009 and reconstruction started at that time and finished about six months later. Not one day has gone by that I am not aware of the implants....not in a good way. The range is from discomfort to outright pain. Doctors seemed to decide how long I should have pain that needed treatment. I'd love to have them live a day in my shoes...or my boobs...as it were.
There was scar tissue that developed between two of my ribs on each side for drain tubes. The left side (always the worst) got bad enough that I can catch a cold with a cough and one of my ribs will break. That's miserable but expected after all these years. The good thing is that they have eased up on the crackdown of prescribing pain meds and will actually give me a cough medication with codeine so I can at least get some sleep.
I do take an antidepressant every day. I live on aspirin. My doctor gives me a low dose of a muscle relaxant which can help now and then. It doesn't relieve the pain but a muscle relaxant will help me sleep.
Luckily I don't have much in the way of other body aches. I am pretty flexible and weight is not an issue for me.
Lately I have battled a GI thing that has been miserable. I went five months without seeing the doctor. I just try to deal with it. She rolls her eyes at me but she doesn't seem to understand that I hurt every damn day and that's life.
Right now, I make a mental note of the good days. They seem to be fewer and fewer as the years tick by.
I really think that's an area where medical care needs to improve. You shouldn't have to gauge your day by how much you hurt.
It's a crappy way to live.
I agree with what you said about pain being something that we have to deal with on a daily basis, and on most days I'm able to ignore it. Every morning when I get up, I have to get up out of my chair(I haven't been able to sleep in a bed for several years) and make sure I'm stable before walking like Frankenstein's monster to the bathroom.
I've been living on Immodium AD for 8 or 9 years, my doctor's have tested me for everything from celiac disease to MS to Ameloydosis to determine the cause of my fucked up stomach, but everything's "normal".
Just like my neuropathy, I've been tested, and then tested again for everything my neurologist can think of, but everythings negative, so I've been diagnosed with Idiopathic Poly Neuropathy in my feet and legs. The only "treatment" is pain management, just like the Osteoarthritis in my knees, hips, lower back, right elbow, and my neck.
The one thing that helps me on my really bad days is music. I put on my headphones and crank up some black or death metal music, put my feet up, and concentrate on that for as long as the pain and or numbness is an issue.
I'm sorry to hear what you had to go through several years ago, getting old isn't for sissies.
