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Chronic Pain
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Posted 1/8/2023 3:24 PM (GMT -8)
I have been in chronic pain for the past 10 years but its gotten much worse in the last 2. I have 20 screws in my back on a failed surgery and a pain pump. I know my wife means well but every time she goes to her mothers she comes back with ideas on how to fix me. She adores her mother and her mothers word is as good as gold in her eyes but its very frustrating to deal with. I know her mother means well too but neither have a clue about what I am going through.
I just got the pain pump and they haven't figured out the proper dose yet so my pain is not managed hardly at all. I respond well to oral medications but they might as well be plutonium with how difficult it is to find a doctor willing to prescribe them. So I spend a lot of time laying down. I do all I can around the house and work through the pain just so I am somewhat helpful around here and then I have to lay down for hours afterward.

Her most recent visit to her mother she came home with ideas on how I am going to strengthen my core which will somehow help my spinal cord and nerve endings from screaming at me. I told her it might help some but my pain isn't muscular and it doesn't matter if I am just sitting, laying down, walking or lifting things my back is killing me so I don't see how my core is going to help but she kept going on and on about it so I just told her I was done with the conversation for now and left it at that.

I don't know what to do about this situation. Its just frustrating because I have tried everything to help with the pain and I dont know how I am even supposed to start walking and exercising when I am at my limit just doing housework. What do I do? What do I say?

Post Edited (HomeBass) : 1/8/2023 3:27:13 PM (GMT-8)

Posted 1/9/2023 9:52 AM (GMT -8)
Hi HomeBass, I think many of us have had to deal with well meaning spouses, family members & friends all wanting to assess our lives & give input on how we can miraculously become almost normal again. They mean well, they just have no idea what they are talking about.

From the sound of things with a failed surgery & ending up with a pain pump you have a lot of long standing health issues. When did you get the pump implanted? It does take time to get a person to the correct dosage & setting to help with the pain. A pump can be a very effective tool for pain. You will not be pain free but will be able to have a better quality of life.

Considering the surgery not working out so well, it could be that your wife is thinking the pain pump is suppose to turn things around much faster. Keep in mind you will still have restrictions no matter what. Does your wife ever go to the dr with you? If not, perhaps at your next appt take her with you & ask the dr to explain to her that you can't just get up & do exercises that someone read about somewhere. Don't be shy about doing this either. Perhaps if she hears this from the dr she will understand things better.

Don't give up & if you find yourself getting upset, go outside & get some fresh air. Sometimes just going outside & breathing can calm a person down.

Take care.
Posted 1/9/2023 2:31 PM (GMT -8)
Good luck with the pump. My friend has one but also gets twice a day breakthrough medication I think it's hydromorphone.
I've been on everything but entered a trial of buprenorphine and thank God it works for me because getting opioid medication is a sick joke these days. Government scared them off of most prescription s

Glen
Posted 1/30/2023 9:40 AM (GMT -8)
Exercising can do a lot to help chronic pain. But, the information regarding this is not specific to individuals that have had surgeries for the issues that are causing them pain. In order to know what is best for you and your body. You need to talk with your doctor. Ask him if he thinks physical therapy might be of help to you. Take your wife with you to these appointments. That way she can share with her mother what your doctor said

I know it is frustrating when loved ones try and help. Look on the bright side. You are loved and cared for. You Are Blessed! There are so many people now days that live alone and are isolated for various reasons.
Posted 2/20/2023 9:03 AM (GMT -8)
Hi Homebass,

Yes if free advice was of any use I would be doing backflips now!!! People mean well but chronic pain is different from short term acute pain. Also spine pain and fusion surgeries are difficult to rebound from.

I have decided to go to Spines R US and get a new cervical section and let my wife install it for me. Maybe you can get your mother in law to install yours!!!

Sorry just a but of humor to help make the day better

Best of luck
Posted 3/13/2023 12:56 PM (GMT -8)
Yes they mean well and I understand where my wife is coming from. She thinks just another surgery will fix it.
I've had surgery then countless nerve blocks and ablations which over time made it worse.
Opiate medication is great for some but the DEA and Washington screwed that up to a point of FUBAR now like you said it's like getting plutonium. I've been very lucky because buprenorphine works for me and it's openly prescribed thank God.
Not quite as good as regular Mu agonist opioids but it's low tolerance is great.
Hate to say it again but exercise even smaller amounts add up and help overall pain and mood.
I've worked up from barely five minutes on the elliptical machine to half an hour.
Slow small bits can be done. I know it's hard but please give it a shot even a couple of minutes

Glen
Posted 3/18/2023 7:35 AM (GMT -8)
I very much identified with and understand your perspective, at least your words strike a familiar cord with me and I have visible damage to my spinal cord for which my pain was blamed for nearly 20 years.

What I came to understand was that, not only did others not have the answers. . .neither did I or my doctors. We are ignorant as a species as to how we are built and function and this is evidenced by the ongoing research with the endocannabinoid and fascial systems, not to mention how few people are helped by pain management.

What I can tell you for certain is that pain medicine will not help you to get better. It will allow you to sit around and get worse. The pain you are experiencing, IMHO, is your body telling you that you need to behave differently. Taking pain medicines will only try to mask that message. I know that is hard to hear and you likely wont accept it. . .I learned the hard way myself. Pain is a message. Your body is not telling you to sit down, give up and numb yourself, so what do you think the message might be?

With all respect and well-meaning to you,
Steve
Posted 6/5/2023 10:14 AM (GMT -8)
Dear Rabid, I have chronic spinal pain and I have been prescribed 1-50 mg Tramadol per day. I use it as a tool to do one of two things, either break the cycle of pain so my brain can calm down and not just fixate on the pain, or as a way to dampen the pain if I have a particularly difficult event, like a long car ride or yard work. I think the misperception about pain meds is that you can get rid of the pain, chronic pain is chronic, it never goes away. Even with a fairly large amount of pain meds there will be many times during a day when pain will be severe. By taking the minimum dose of Tramadol and never going up in dosage, I have a tool that helps me get through the day. Just knowing I have this tool, that I can choose to use in the best way for me, helps me from getting caught up in depressive thoughts. My pain has been worse in the past, I am able to get by with a low dose, low level pain med, if I start getting more profound pain I may have to change meds, but for now I am getting by. FYI, I am very active I work full time, and work out 4 times a week, plus the dreaded yard work....
Posted 6/11/2023 11:42 AM (GMT -8)
Bearcub,

Thanks for the reply and I certainly understand what you've written. Exchange Tramadol for dilaudid, hydrocodone and fentanyl and I couldve have written your words myself for way over a decade. I dont understand your situation, but I identify with those words.

Needed or not, temporary or not, pain meds like all those listed are intended to mute pain. My point is that pain, especially chronic pain, is there for a reason. There is no advantage to an organism to be kept in agony for decades until it dies an unrelated death. Our minds are easily powerful enough to transcend pain, although I do not mean to minimize the difficulty or propose it as something that I can do much of.

What I mainly mean by saying all this is that the pain is in the conscious reality between your ears for a reason. Your subconscious is allowing that pain to be present in your perception over other sensations for a specific reason, to make you aware that something is wrong and that your current behavior needs to change. Your body has no reason to beat on you for 20 year old mistakes to teach you a lesson already learned; do you understand my thinking?

Working out and staying active is great, it is mandatory for good health. . .but there are wrong ways to do the right things and there are wrong things to do. There are wrong things to consume and wrong ways to behave and if you do enough of these wrong things and also have illness(es) they will make a person feel terrible despite being active. Hell, if I dont drink enough water no meds can fix it. Pills are also a heavy burden on your organs, again completely irrespective of whether they are needed for your pain, they are still also a burden. . .it is good to come off them for awhile to remind yourself of their burden. It really helped me but is admittedly extremely difficult, impractically so in most cases.

Having pain meds as your only tool for relief is one million times better than not having them. My gosh, if I was in pain just a bit longer in this latest phase of opiod prohibition. . .I would be pretty militant about my access to opiates and indignant to anyone bothering to monitor my use. I would be dead without them. Happily though, I found a cure and not just another mask for the symptoms. I wish the same for you and did not mean to cast any shade on those that need pain meds. They just wont help you progress much unless your goal is to be free of them for real.They stifled my motivation to struggle to full health. It was admittedly very painful and risky, but necessary to come off them. I offer my thoughts and experience for your consideration, not as a prescription of things for you to do.

Best of health to you,
Steve

, , ,and chronic pain is not forever. Despite what you may have been told, nothing is forever so please do not have that expectation. Please have the expectation that like mine, your miracle is attainable within your lifetime. . .then come and run the grand canyon with me. Cheers and best of luck with your pain. -Steve
Posted 6/12/2023 8:12 AM (GMT -8)
Thank you for a thoughtful response, I am now 67 years old, I work full time (computer jockey), I work out 4-5 times per week, I maintain my house and property, and I am in pain as I write this. In the fall of 2010 I was in about as good a shape as a 54year old could be in. I was thin, I could still do 50 push ups, I cycled about 100 miles per week, ran 10 miles per week, lifted and stretched twice per week. My workouts were well planned and reasonable, I had a plan to get back into team sports the next year because you had to be 55 to compete in the Seniors division, I was going to have some fun and tear up the old guys with one season of basketball and one of fast pitch softball. Then on a Wednesday in October I was walking to work and all of a sudden I felt weird pains in my back, my life has not been the same since. I didn't know it but I had blown out my L4-5 disc and pieces of disc material were migrating into the spinal cord. I had never had a back problem of any kind so I just assumed at first that I was having cramping, so I finished walking to work (3 miles), spent the day bent over sideways, and attempted to walk home, after two miles I had to call my wife to come get me. I spent the night on my hands and knees over the top of a footstool (I know weird position) to try and take pressure off of my back, got about 30 minutes sleep. Anyway, I had surgery, but that first day, and probably walking miles after the disc blew out, had cast the die. I have had drop foot since then, and my back problems were just beginning. I rehabbed and got back to working out, I couldn't run, but I could walk a few miles. All in all, a year after the injury I was doing O.K. Then a year after the injury, I started getting a severe pain in the middle of my back (T10) and it has been there ever since. I have had every therapy, shot, medication docs have been able to conjure up, and the pain is right there, right now. You wrote "What I mainly mean by saying all this is that the pain is in the conscious reality between your ears for a reason", please if you can, expound more fully on this concept. Again thanks for your response.
Posted 6/12/2023 5:26 PM (GMT -8)
Please allow me to explain using myself as an example. I was in a very bad accident and my excruciating pain was attributed to a spinal cord injury. I limited my activities and became somewhat notable among my friends for enduring a great deal of pain. After 15 years they could no longer stand to watch me bear it or, occasionally, deal with my irrascibility.

My friends were lovely and empathetic, but they could not feel the pain that was crushing my soul and my desire to take another breath, and in the extreme it matters. Pain is our sole experience and it is useless to try to describe it to others.

Pain is useful only to the organism experiencing the pain and only insolong as the organism can learn from it. Our subconscious minds are so powerful that they can block out and create sensation and even the experience of time. The subconscious can end tge consciousness, at least temporarily. We do not consciously perceive all the possible sensations we could at any given moment, for instance we generally don't feel our clothes, jewelry, light breezes etc... Then why does our subconscious allow through pain? It is to send a message to the consciousness that there is something it believes can be fixed. I believe if the subconscious truly believes you are in irreparable condition, it will help you to relieve the resulting pain. Thus, pain we can feel,, is considered rectifiable by the subconscious. This has been my experience, which was facilitated by hypnosis, I believe it has taken nearly 6 years and counting working all day, every day.

We simply cannot give into the thinking that pain is something we must live with because we are old, worn out, and/or damaged. Pain is a message, it is a blinking red light to YOU that YOU need to change YOUR behaviors. What else could it mean? What other purpose would pain serve? Pain is 100% inside you, and only you.

Here ends my sermon with respect from a weathered 46 year old whipper snapper, never was an athlete. I was crippled at 23, in suicidal pain at 40, ran my first mile at 43 and marathon at 45. I now run trails with folks up to 83 and hope to beat their longevity.
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