Living with chronic pain can bring you down. It affects everything, from sleeping to relationships to cooking.
In this post, we take a look at some of the things that you’ll only understand if you’re someone living with chronic pain.
Pain Medications Don’t Always Resolve The Pain
When most people get a headache, they take painkillers to numb the pain and, usually, they work. However, those with chronic pain don’t have as much luck with over-the-counter medication. The pain seems to persist regardless.
Brands, such as Simply CBD, are trying to find alternative means of restoring balance to the body. However, many people living with chronic pain aren’t yet aware of these other options.
Dealing With Pain Requires More Than Pills
While pills are part of the process of dealing with chronic pain, there are many other elements too. These include exercise, meditation, self-care, massage and patches. In fact, people with chronic pain often have half a dozen things in their toolbox, designed to help them feel better and eliminate the discomfort quickly.
It Comes And Goes
Chronic pain isn’t a continuous background hum of pain: it tends to come and go. Some days are better than others. You might wake up Monday morning feeling great but come Saturday evening, you could feel terrible.
What’s so annoying about the condition is how hard it is to predict. You never quite know when you’re going to have a flare up or how bad it is going to be. You can go to sleep the night before feeling full of energy, only to wake up feeling rotten.
Doctors Don’t Always Understand
Doctors who don’t experience chronic pain often don’t understand what it’s like to live with it. There are some myths out there, such as younger people can’t experience chronic pain or that if you give someone with chronic pain strong drugs, they will become addicted. That’s not always true.
Waiting For Medications Is Anxiety-Provoking
People with chronic pain rely on medications to get them through the day. Ideally, you’d be able to buy the drugs that you need over-the-counter, but the medical establishment has taken it upon itself to decide when and how to dole out medications.
For people with chronic pain, this can be anxiety-producing. You’re dependent on other people to give you the medications that you need to feel better. Often, you find yourself worrying that they won’t give you what you want, causing fear.
You’ve Tried It All But People Keep Making Suggestions
When you have chronic pain, you try to do as much as you can to alleviate it. In fact, figuring out how to correct it is a full-time occupation.
That’s why it can feel a little odd when people ask you whether you’ve tried this or that. Given that you’re in pain, you’ve usually tried everything that there is. You don’t need other people’s suggestions.
Every Day Is A Mystery
You never quite know what’s going to happen when you have pain. Even if you wake up in the morning in pain, that doesn’t mean that it will last for the rest of the day.