Posted 6/18/2015 8:15 PM (GMT -5)
Iheartx,
I've had pain for a very very long time. My diagnosis is Fibromyalgia, but I'm waiting for the results from Ingenx.
To second what others said, pain increases a lot of the time because we do "too much". What is too much for one person is not necessarily too much for another. You have to listen to your body. Don't push past your limit. If you can learn the signals from your body, stop when it tells you to stop.
It's a hard to thing to learn. Many of us are type A personalities and we work through the pain until it finally breaks us. Same with energy. Sometimes it help to keep a diary. There are some apps that allow you to record things like weather, pain level, foods eaten, activity level, medication and just about anything you want. I know one is Chronic Pain Tracker. It's actually really good because you can create a report that shows everything lined up in time so you can see a pattern. The only thing is in the terms state that you agree to them using your data.
I almost always wake up with a bad headache. I'm sure that it's because my neck gets twisted when I'm sleeping. I also have the neck popping. When I stand or walk too long, I get hip pain and leg pain usually shooting up from my feet. I also have pain that starts at the base of my skull where the muscles attach. It shoots up an over the top of my head.
If I let the head pain go to long, I generally feel like I am going to throw up. I have started taking Dramamine when I know I'm on the path leading to that extreme pain.
A couple things you can try for head neck and shoulder pain. First take a man's sock (the ones that go almost to the knee) and fill it with rice but leave some room then tie a knot in the end. Throw that in the microwave for 30 seconds or so. Once you've done it a few times you'll need to adjust the time so that the rice gets warm but not too warm. You can then wrap the rice sock around the neck to hit the right spot. It works better than a heating pad, especially for the muscle attachments at the base of the skull. The heat loosens the muscles.
Second, get a tennis ball and put it in a spot on your back where you are trying to loosen muscle. Lean back in your chair. The weight of your body puts pressure on the area where the tennis touches your body. It's good for shoulders, especially right under the shoulder blade. That's a hard spot to get and frequently those muscles cause pain in a lot of areas.
Third, check out tramadol. It's a non-narcotic pain reliever. It works really well for some people. I found great relief except I had an allergic reaction. I have lots of reactions to medicines but it is fine for most people.
Lastly, everyone is afraid of using narcotics. They're afraid of getting hooked. As long you take it correctly. Part of the problem is the government cracking down on doctors for over prescribing. They make regulations but they are so wishy washy many doctors won't risk their license.
I have to see my doctor every three months. Most of the time the only reason is to get my scripts. We discuss how everything is working. I fill out questionnaires and pain scales which get put in my record. My doctor gets notified any time I fill any script even if he didn't write it. I have to have a written script every month. No refills. All that is to protect his license.
His take on pain relief is that you shouldn't chase the pain. If you have chronic pain and wait until it becomes too much to bare without the meds, it's already too late. You need to keep ahead of the pain. His favorite question to ask is "if I know based on how I feel now that in two hours the pain will be really bad, why do i wait to take the med?" If I wait the two hours, the meds can't work properly. If you take the meds when you know in two hours the pain will be bad, they work better. This not his idea, its backed up by studies.
So I take my pain meds on a schedule just like all my other meds. I still have pain, but the meds work to kick the level of pain down. When I fill out the pain scales, he has me mark with pain meds and without.
Because your body builds up a tolerance to the meds, every now and then you have to stop them completely for about a week before restarting them. It's the only way to do it.
about a year and a half ago, my doctor gave up his solo practice because it was too expensive. He joined a Orthopedic practice. He wanted me to see one of the pain medicine doctors to see if there was anything different to do. She ruled out everything but Fibromyalgia. He interrogated me afterwards but really wanted to know if she tried to talk me out of the pain meds. She didn't try. We have stuck with what works. Both of these doctors recognize that if your pain level is 9 and when you take a pain med it drops to 6 1/2 then its appropriate to treat with pain meds as long as the side effects are reasonable.
The only time I don't take my meds on a schedule is if I know I will be getting behind the wheel of a car. If I know I need to go somewhere, I just don't take the meds. By the time it's ok to take the meds I'm dieing. It usually takes at least a couple of days to get back in sync but it's way better than not having meds at all.
I once went for a functional capacity test to prove I was unable to continuing to work. It was pitiful. When I got home they called me to see what my pain levels were and apparently it's standard practice. I said it was 10+ and the woman said why wasn't I at the hospital. If I was able to drive home I clearly couldn't have a pain level of over 10.
I was pretty dumbfounded. She clearly didn't know anything about chronic pain. I explained that there was nothing the ER could do for me. I was already on pain meds and even if I wasn't they tend to treat people with chronic pain as drug seekers.
If your doctor is good at treating pain and your happy with it stay with him. If not and your pain is debilitating, see a pain medicine specialist.
One other thing that's helped is a nasal spray that an allergist gave me. I have major problems with weather and smells. If someone comes near me with perfume or cologne, I get really sick. It's like an axe through my forehead and always makes me nauseous. I have a better record than my local weather man at predicting rising and falling of barometric pressure. I can usually tell about 2 days in advance. There is a nerve that runs up through the nasal passes. The spray is a steroid and must be taken twice a day, but since you never know when a lady wearing too much perfume is going to sit next to you in a theater. It's been very successful for me. The name is Azelastine HCL. I don't know if there is an herbal that does the same thing. I'm still figuring out all this my self.
I don't know how pain meds figure into the Lyme and Co infections but as long as it goes untreated you will have a hard time. That's actually my question. When did people move off meds like pain meds and muscle relaxants, but I'll leave that to another thread. Possibly there'll be some answers in the Buhner video.
Pain is the worst. If I can answer any questions just let me know.
Hope you have a good day,
Kim