I have been dealing with chronic pain for a while now. I looked back at my daily calendars and realized this arthritic right knee has been giving me hell for about 2.5 years. The left one had orthoscopic surgery and some relief in 2003, but it too is painful again. I have had a run of poor luck with doctors. Several have hedged further surgery while offering ineffective half measures. That is another story, one that involves the bad mixture of medicine and a business model. The pain, however, has at least been a shadow in my life for a long time. If I am with people or on the phone, I get to forget it for some time. I also take Aleve and ibuprofen which take the edge off the aching. I have a fear that I will become my mother, bless her. She had issues, so I am not throwing blame her way. She did complain of aches and pains for about as long as I could remember. She is no longer physically with us, but her complaints and her managing to be ill for major functions, like weddings and Christmas and Tuesdays, are shadows in my own life. I therefore attempt not to bitch about my own pain. My children and husband might beg to differ, but I really try not to whine. I try so hard that I probably let myself suffer rather than admit to the problem and seek help. Of course this is way more complicated than I am expressing here. For instance, add to the mix that my 82 year old mother-in-law was still cutting her own grass up until this summer, that she grocery shopped on the way home from the hospital after having her 4th or 5th child of 8, and I feel like a wuss if I mention I am suffering from anything less than a major head trauma--and that better be an open wound to impress my ex-emergency room nurse husband.
Life is so interesting. I have fought depression for a couple of decades, and recently the various drugs have not helped much. Could it be the physical aches that constantly nag me? Hmmmm.
More to come, maybe solutions, but at least changes.
