Tag: living with chronic pain

Restless Arm Syndrome

Bones

Some weeks ago, as I was lying on my couch and undertaking my age old stress management of eternal scrolling and listening to murder / accidents / plane crash investigations, when my left arm twitched. It crept up on me. What I can only describe as a burning anxiety set in to my shoulder and upper arm. It went away for a few brief seconds when I moved my arm or tensed the muscle, but otherwise it just sat there, fat and heavy, destroying all my attempts at relaxation.

At first it was only there when I was incredibly relaxed. I’d begin my relaxation routine, and it was only when I was well and truly relaxed, body pliable and muscles limp, that it would come.

Then it came as I was relaxing. Then it came whenever I just lay down and stopped for a few minutes.

It was at that point that I really started to notice it and pay attention and catalogue it. It felt like a bad case of anxiety energy – that one you get where you have burning need to do something, anything but you can’t make yourself do a damn thing, so it sits in your chest and tightens until you want to explode. My shoulder and upper arm muscles spasmed more frequently, and the only relief I got was from moving my arm. It didn’t matter what position it was in, once it stopped moving, the burning sensation came back. I tried to google “anxiety in my arm” which, understandably, didn’t produce many results. I kept digging and came across Restless Arm Syndrome. I’d only ever heard of Restless Leg Syndrome, which is a common enough comorbidity to Fibromyalgia.

Restless Arm Syndrome is typically where Restless Leg Syndrome progresses to. When it’s really bad, it can involve more areas of your body than just your legs. But I’ve never had this feeling in my legs before, and no other body part has ever been involved, so it couldn’t be that, and I really struggled to find any information on primary Restless Arm Syndrome.

Regardless I went to see my GP who advised that, fortunately, the treatment for Restless <Insert Limb Here> Syndrome was pregabalin. The pregabalin that I’d just finished weaning down from 300mg twice a day to 150mg twice a day. As soon as I’d increased my dose back up to 300mg twice a day, however, the arm stopped burning and twitching.

I think it may be creeping back in lately – there are a lot of unavoidable stressors in my life at the moment, which could be contributing to it – but it is still considerably better than it was. I’d love to be on less pregabalin, it makes me feel emotionally flat, but I really like not having anxiety arm!

Taking A Break From Reality

Bones

2020 has been a shitter of a year, and I don’t think anyone has come out of it unscathed. I know I certainly haven’t.

Earlier in the year I damaged my wrist to such an extent that I need surgery to fix it. Unfortunately for me, the first surgeon I went to is faffing about and, as far as I know, still hasn’t even seen the MRI I provided him with. So I’m off to see a second surgeon in the new year, hopefully with a view to getting this thing fixed some time in the next 6 odd months. The result of this is that I haven’t been able to use my dominant wrist – and therefore dominant hand and arm – properly since the start of June. I can’t type much, I can’t hand write, I can’t hold things heavier than my cellphone … in fact, I can’t even hold my cellphone when my wrist is turned at certain angles. I can’t even chop vegetables!

What this means is I basically have a dud dominant hand, and in my line of study, you can’t have a dud dominant hand. And since the surgeon has been faffing about humming and hawing over whether or not to do the surgery (for the record, it does need surgery to reconstruct the ruptured ligaments and tendon sheaths), I’m not able to continue my course of study. At least not until my wrist is fixed.

So I’m taking the year off. And I may not work at all.

I cannot recall a time where I have not had something looming over me, whether that be university obligations or work obligations. There has always been something on the near horizon, or something I should be doing instead of relaxing. It’s a hazard of life, unfortunately. We are only valuable when we are productive, and for many, work is a matter of survival. I’m in the entirely privileged situation where I can afford to not work for a year, to not earn for a year. I mean I’d love to keep that money for other things (like vet bills, or, if I’m really lucky, maybe even part of a house deposit), but I will survive if I don’t.

So I’m going to. I’m going to take this year off, and I’m going to enjoy myself without the need to find a job and work. I’ll keep my eyes and ears out for a part time one that I might enjoy, because it would be nice to work for pleasure instead of need, but it’s not going to be my goal. No, my goal this year is to relax and unwind, sort my life and my health out, and maybe even reconnect with that creative part of me that loves to write.

But most of all, I am going to appreciate this opportunity to do nothing. I’m going to enjoy getting bored. I’m going to relish the feeling of having no obligations to work or to university. I’m going to live.

Chronic Illness and the Reward of Achievement

Bones

While at an appointment for pain management, the physiotherapist told me something so utterly profound, it has changed the way I manage my life.

When you are chronically ill, you do not feel a reward for doing stuff, achieving stuff. You only feel punishment from your body for doing / achieving the thing, whether that’s by increased fatigue or increased pain. So we don’t actually want to do anything because we are punished for it.

And suddenly so much of my life makes sense. I don’t want to do little tasks, like hanging up washing, because it will exacerbate my fatigue and pain considerably. I don’t even want to un-pack the dishwasher for the same reason. Some days I don’t want to get off the couch, because walking is going to cause pain and fatigue.

Over the last couple of days I have trialled a new thing. It’s a bit of a triple whammy. Instead of trying to remember to do things, and when they need to be done by, I have downloaded a task management app on my phone (and chromebook) and begun adding things to it. Right now I’m trying to de-clutter my lounge, so I’ve scheduled myself a small task to do each day, something bite-sized that I can actually achieve – today was ‘clear the top of the desk’. Yesterday was ‘clear the floor around the desk. Tomorrow I have ‘organise the top shelf behind the desk’ and the day after I have ‘organise the bottom shelf behind the desk’. Now, admittedly, some of this organising and clearing is ‘I don’t know where to put this thing and I don’t really have anywhere to put it right now so I’m going to move it further into the de-cluttering area’, but the majority of it is actually organising things and putting them in their proper place. Once I have completed my task, I get to ‘tick’ it off on my app, and then administer the reward!

This is where it got a bit tricky. What should I reward myself with? Should I have a scaled reward system, so the bigger the task, the greater the reward? What can I give myself that won’t be so expensive so as to be unsustainable?

I asked a good friend of mine who suggested I look into love languages to figure out what will work best for me. So off I went to research love languages, and then self-love languages (which apparently can be different), to discover that I am a physical contact and quality time kind of gal. No real surprises there. But even with that information I was still stumped. I don’t exactly feel comfortable giving myself a hug, self-massages are out because they’re painful rather than relaxing, and I already have excessive amounts of down time.

But I did realise that I could give myself small amounts of very high quality relaxation time by listening to meditation music (courtesy of some random list on Spotify, bless other people doing the work for you!) and lighting a scented candle and just staring at it. It’s a small circle of calm in my otherwise hectic life, and provides my body with powerful relaxation, which reduces the pain and fatigue. It’s also my favourite scented candle.

For other, bigger tasks, I’m thinking about things like a hot shower with music and scented candles, and then massaging my favourite skincare products in. I have a delicious foot moisturiser that relieves tension and pain, and a face cream that helps to soothe my trigeminal neuralgia. For really big tasks, maybe a massage, or maybe I rope my amazing human into giving me a head rub or extra cuddles.

It took hours to work through this, but it is well worth having a think about. I’m hoping that if I can provide enough positive reinforcement for completed tasks, then getting the motivation to complete tasks will be easier. Because I’m tired of being punished. It’s time to turn the tables.

The Difference Between Abuse And Care

Bones
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

I had a very interesting discovery the other day.

I had a friend make a joke on one of my posts that suggested I might have a diagnosis other than fibromyalgia. She’s suggested this particular diagnosis ad nauseam in the past. I didn’t take it well. I was upset and antsy and, after some prompting from another friend, I politely set a boundary of can we please not with this topic, and how it makes me feel.

And she apologised. She apologised, explained she had been trying to make a joke about how she could empathise with my experiences because she has the other diagnosis, and the injury I had experienced is one she could imagine herself doing. Then she apologised for missing the mark with the joke. And none of it was ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ or anything like that, it was a true and genuine apology, taking responsibility for what she said and how that made me feel.

It was freeing in a way I cannot put into words. Suddenly I wasn’t offended by the joke, and I could feel her care and consideration for me. It increased my love and respect for her a thousandfold.

This is totally different to the friend I lost. During my diagnosis process for both fibromyalgia and trigeminal neuralgia, when the doctor and I were both pretty sure what I had but were doing the formalities, she would send me messages with all sorts of different things I could have. Constantly. I rarely mentioned any of my symptoms past ‘ow’. She never once asked about them. And she was saying ‘oh what about this? and this? you could have this!’ I repeatedly told her we were pretty confident it was fibromyalgia (or trigeminal neuralgia) and it felt like she was dismissing my knowledge and my doctor’s knowledge of the situation.

She never apologised. She would only say ‘I just don’t want you to have x because it’s chronic and it’s awful’. That is not a place of care. That is a place of control. Which pretty much summed up our whole relationship.

Because of my long history of being abused (right from infancy through to this latest ‘friend’), I have difficulty with identifying when people come from a place of care and love. It’s often only once I begin to establish a boundary, and they accept it and apologise for stepping on it that I can tell the difference.

It has started healing a little part of me that was very raw.

I’m Not Okay

Bones
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

I’m not okay today.

I did too much. Way too much, and now I’m paying for it with full body aches.

When I’m this fatigued – and it is a bone deep dragging fatigue that pulls every bit of energy from your muscles and leaves you in agony – my good mood inevitably slides away to a numbness I associate with my depression.

I will shortly haul myself off the couch and put on my fluffy cosy socks. Then I’ll turn the heatpump on and cuddle up on the couch and read terrible fanfiction until the claws of fatigue retract from my muscles. It is important to coddle yourself on bad days.

I’m not okay, but I know that I will be.