The fun thing about living with chronic pain is that it’s invisible. The not fun thing about living with chronic pain is that it’s invisible. There will be days that I’m feeling mostly fine – very minor pain. There are days that I feel like I’m hungover and was in a bar fight the night before, and that’s bizarre since I’m at a point where one glass of wine makes me sleepy. Sometimes I’ll notice something sore on my body and at the end of the day I’ll notice a bruise or swelling in that spot.
But people can’t always see my pain. It’s widespread and can cause me to limp or walk around holding my back, but to someone that doesn’t know what waking up every day to aches and pains from an invisible illness will never understand why. To them it could just be a backache or maybe I sprained my ankle. Not because I’m favoring a leg because my hips aren’t even and pain is radiating up my back because of it.
I’ve dealt with this pain for a while. I’ve seen countless doctors, chiropractors and massage therapists. Some believe in fibromyalgia, some think I’ll be cured if I just do some more yoga. Ten years of yoga and still no cure for my ailments. Some say it’s all in my head so I see a therapist. I’ve been prescribed pain medicine, antidepressants, a blend of the two, acid reflux medicine, migraine medicine, anti-anxiety medicine. Been there, probably done that. Things work until my body becomes immune and the pain continues.
I feel like I forever smell like icy hot. If I eat anything fun or go out for drinks I have to pop tums like candy thanks to my GERD. But take the heavy stuff daily to maintain my chronic acid reflux and heartburn. I wear a knee brace when I know I’ll be walking a lot. I wear a wrist brace to bed most nights (and as I type this because ouch). I put my tens unit to work on my back and wrists quite a bit. Then I soak in Epsom salt baths or sit on my heat/massage pad before bed.
My migraines are no longer as bad and occur less often, but when they happen they come back with a vengeance. Between the ages of 7 and 21 I was hospitalized three times for migraines. The first time I nearly blacked out and was experiencing symptoms of a stroke.
I’m grateful that I’ve had a lot of understanding people in my life that accept that sometimes I can’t go out because I’m in pain. Or that I’m calling in sick because my back is stiff and I just can’t get up. My kids know that sometimes mommy just needs to curl up in bed so they need to play together or on their own so I can find some energy and pain relief.
Living with chronic pain has been a difficult journey. My pain threshold is high, so much that I can usually get tattoos and deep tissue massages without much pain. Yet I’m still super tender. I got a massage last weekend and the massage therapist noted all the tender spots and I yelped a little when she would go over them. I find myself having no problem walking all around Chicago, or the 10 miles per day I walked on my honeymoon or throughout New Orleans on my day off. But I feel it the next day and can’t get out of bed. Even if I prepare for it by soaking in Epsom salts or asking Billy to put icy hot all over my back, it will still hurt the next day. I go back to the analogy of the bar fight after a long night of drinking nothing but tequila. But in reality, I just maybe overdid it by cleaning my kitchen or spending an hour at Kohl’s.
I’m not some hypochondriac. I’m just a person living with an invisible illness. When someone tells you that, believe them. Check in with them. Be patient and kind if they have to cancel plans because they are out of spoons. I have great people in my life that know I’m sometimes struggling with it and try to help out as much as possible. From Billy’s icy hot stained hands to my friends still inviting me to events even though I have to sometimes cancel. Without my group around to give me support, I don’t know what I would do.