Dealing with Pain

If you suffer from chronic pain, you inherently become and expert at managing pain. Though daily pain is, well, a pain to deal with, I have found a few things that help me cope. Everyone is different, and what works for me may only make things worse for you—but you never know.

**Please note: I am not a medical professional—so whatever advice I have to give is solely from a personal perspective and should not be followed if contraindicated by your physician. These tips help me manage my musculoskeletal pain due to spondylolisthesis—and may not help if your pain is from another source.

1) Hot baths – Though baths may not take your pain away, they do help to relax you and your muscles. I find that if my pain gets to an intolerable point, sitting in a hot bath is sort of like pressing a ‘reset’ button and makes the pain easier to deal with.

2) Distraction – Be it going to see a movie, talking to a friend, or listening to some great music, doing something to take my mind off the pain helps a great deal. 

3) Aleve – Though it doesn’t help 100% of the time—it does take the edge off sometimes.

4) Talking about pain – On a really bad pain day, bending my husband’s ear and having a good old fashioned pity party helps me. It is a way to release my frustration and communicate what I am going through. It is my opinion that chronic pain has two equal facets—the physical and the mental. This tip doesn’t do a whole bunch for the physical, but it does help alleviate the mental.

5) Prayer – Giving my pain to God always works. He is the ultimate healer and talking to Him diminishes the scary aspect of pain. Trust that He will never give you more than you can handle.

Let’s talk for a minute about pain drugs. While I have taken pain medicine on occasion for short periods of time, I steer clear of any long-term use. I fear that taking something on a daily basis will only make my pain worse in the long run. I guess I feel conditioned to pain right now, and if I was taking pills every day, my pain conditioning would decrease. Don’t get me wrong, I have been tempted on more than one occasion to throw in the towel and tell my doctors I can’t handle this anymore, but I am trying hard not to take that route. I feel that once you go down that road, it’s hard to get off that path.  Now--that being said--my daily pain is manageable.  It's not fun, but I can still get up and go to work most days.  Lots of people, who are in far worse shape, need drugs to function.  In their case, drugs are one of their only options.  Thankfully, I'm not there yet.

I don’t claim to be an expert or hero when it comes to dealing with pain—I have a lot of really bad days. On those days, I scoff at the things on the list above and just want the pain to go away. Pain makes me angry, bitter, irritable, depressed, and scared. But, this pain is my cross to bear. It’s not fair, but these are the cards I have been dealt. It could be so much worse, and it is for so many people.