The Day I Almost Gave Up – Living With Chronic Pain

I pride myself in being strong, and toughing things out and not whining and really just dealing with life with an optimistic attitude and not letting things get me down. That’s why yesterday…yesterday was a tough day for me. It was the day that I finally admitted defeat, I broke and I cried…I actually cried because I just don’t know what to do any more. I guess you kind of need the back story to understand so here it goes…

I’m a relatively healthy gal. Maybe a few pounds overweight (and by a few I really mean like 30), but nothing horribly bad. I just can’t quit the slurpees y’all, but I wouldn’t say I’m totally unhealthy. When I delivered my daughter a little over three years ago my epidural went terribly wrong…the delivery went fine, but the epidural went to high and I couldn’t feel anything below my neck and then once it wore off I was in such pain in my back, shoulders, and neck that I was unable to get out of bed for a solid week. I basically missed the first week of my daughters life because I couldn’t even use the restroom or bathe without help. Thank god for my husband, who had never cared for a newborn (we met when my son was 4 1/2), he was amazing with Bug. However, that was the beginning of my pain.

By the time my maternity leave was up and I had to go back to work and I had recovered enough to be “normal” and I really thought that although it was a slow process things were going to go back to normal and for a while, it really seemed like they did. I’d tense up easier than before and occasionally get a tension headache, but nothing a few Advil didn’t help. Over the last year things have been getting progressivly worse though, the occasional tension has evolved into constant issue. The 4-6 Advil a day increased to a dozen or more just to take the edge off. The headaches have evolved into migraines and we’re talking 3 or 4 a week. I spend my days not focusing on my work, my kids, and my husband, but fighting pain and trying keep the migraines at bay. The past 3 months or so have been the worst of it…I’ve been a terrible employee, mother, and wife. I know my family is tired of hearing “I don’t feel well” or “I have a headache”. I try to keep it to myself but some days I hurt so bad that I’m nauseous and can’t do anything but lie down and definitely not be productive at work or remotely helpful with the household obligations. It sucks.

My Bug at 6 mo. old. This is the child that broke me, and yes, it’s been totally worth every painful moment.

Yes I’ve gone to the doctor and tried to get help with the pain management. My doctor of 20+ years has not be helpful. Bless his heart I think because I rarely seek medical help, I just push through things and don’t really complain, he doesn’t get the severity of how bad things have gotten. I recently changed physicians, to an entirely new clinic and they prescribed some meds that they were hopeful would help until tests could be run, x-rays reviewed, and whatever else needs to be done to get to the bottom of the problem and find a solution. A week into the new prescription though and I’ve gotten no relief. Today was another migraine day, the second this week, and I even had to leave work early because I just couldn’t fight through the pain anymore and on my drive home I broke down. I sobbed the whole 15 miles from my office to the house. I feel like I have no control and I’ve remained hopeful that something was going to help but today, I just felt defeated.

Now what? I don’t know. I put on my big girl panties and deal with it. I think I needed a good outlet because pretending everything is fine when you hurt like hell, and just don’t want to seem whiney is hard…and it just happened to be today on the drive home. I have a follow up with the new doc next week so we shall see…hopefully we can try something else and go from there. In the meantime work needs to get done, kids need a happy mama, and hubby needs an attentive wife so it shall be, at least to the best of my ability until we find a solution for this.

Thanks for letting me vent and as always, thanks for reading.

*This post was actually written a little over a month ago. There have been some developments since then which I hope you’ll come back and read about as I’ll be sharing the information over the next few weeks in hopes that it could help others in some way.