It not only hurts us, but those around us.
My writing style which is off the cuff or better yet, from brain to page without all the checking, rephrasing, re-write’s, and such I would prefer to write the more humorous blogs which sound exactly like the story happened and not like a surgeon went in and doctored the entire thing. The surgical style of writing is fine and has its place, I know there are people out there that enjoy that type of writing. However, I also know that when your blogging about subjects that revolve around the various issues that caregiving brings up at some point you will have to write that both styles of writing. I have in the past written six page papers on his holiness the Dalai Lama, Traveling Europe and more recently as my life has evolved blogs revolving around medical needs, depression, medications, log sheets and pain devices. In this blog I would like to discuss the issues that not only effect the caree but the care’s family.
In the beginning when we become caree’s we think that the pain, discomfort, physical, mental and emotional issues we are going through is all about us and no one else can even imagine what it’s like. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the saying, “You never know how bad something is until you have it yourself,” well, it true. I have two family members who have both said this (not including my mom). The first injured his back when his motorcycle went out from under him and he is now dealing with constant back pain and when he gets home from work he is about dead to the world, shower, eat and lay down to and try to get the pain to subside. The other is dealing with major joint issues as well as depression and they have both told me that they’ve seen me during one of my pain spasms and never quite understood how bad it was until they had issues of their own and now they say they feel for me and the pain I deal daily because now they have a closer idea of what it really does feels like to go, day in and day out with a high level (7-10) of pain. It’s really is hard to explain just how bad the pain can get after sleeping on your back, even side part of the night, because you “never” sleep through the night, waking up, working, house work and by the time the end of the day hits your pain is at a peak to just lay down for another 3.5-4 hours of sleep (combined time), to repeat the same thing over. Here I am only going on fifty and having everyone think or suggest you can’t do something, give you a look when you even suggest thinking about it or when they’ve found out you did it. You still want to feel as if your needed, useful, capable and some of the things I can still do. Yes, I know my pain will be higher, that I will need to take an extra pain med and possibly pay for it tomorrow or even the next two or three days, but to be able to grab that feeling of success or “Yes, I did it,” that’s what it’s about.
See, the idea here for those of you knew to chronic pain and with that I mean any type of pain that puts you down and out. Here is a list taken from an abcNews article that list the top conditions that can be considered as chronic pain. They are “in order of frequency: back pain, headache pain is number two when looking at both acute and chronic types of pain, pain in the joints comes next — it’s a very common condition whether caused by different types of arthritis or trauma to joints whether it’s accidents or sports injuries — and then a variety of different pains, types of pain, whether it’s chronic abdominal pain, acute abdominal pain and different types of chest pain syndromes.” (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PainOverview/story?id=4034145, November 12, 2008) I don’t reach for that ring every day or even every week, I may only do something like that once a month, because “I KNOW” what the pain is going to be like. And if I know we have something planned for the coming up weekend, I won’t attempt anything of the sort as to not interfere with our plans. We recently went on vacation to Europe for our daughters (two) college graduations, we have learned over 
the years because we didn’t realize then blogs and internet pain control related sites existed, that when we fly in and out we need to add an additional two day minimum to allow me to recover from the pain of the flight, changing planes, waiting in the terminals, and so on. This turns a seven day vacation into an 9-11 day vacation and trust me you’ll thank yourself. Even a simple trip to Disneyland requires an additional day at the start and end of the trip before flying out and it requires we either take our transport wheelchair or we rent one there. If you have any type of chronic pain which affects your walking, I highly recommend even if your stubborn (get over it) and buy a “Transport Wheelchair,” it will solve a lot of problems and you can always use it to hold all the souvenirs you purchase.
You have to plan, even more than anything else you have to plan, because pretty much everything someone with chronic pain does makes their pain worse. Find out what stops the pain or at least reduces, such as a portable wheelchair, cane, can be as easy as a brace, prepare yourself and think ahead and if you’ve never been on a vacation since the pain started ask your doctor for ideas to help you and your family, go on web sites such as pickyourpain.org, caregiving.com or any of the many that are out there and ask readers for suggestions, you won’t regret it. If I only knew then what I know now, a lot of our family vacations, even a simple family Christmas photo session would have gone differently. Things with the kids growing up I would have known why they were such an issue. Some of it was timing, my wrong time of the day or I over did it during the day and it was catching up to me and unfortunately to them. The main item here is, ask questions and not only of your doctor, ask web groups for thoughts, talk to your family and listen to what their saying, you will be surprised as what you find out. Then make some changes for the better, for everyone, for yourself, you deserve to be happy even if you are in pain. It is possible, it just takes time.
“Pain without Humor is just Painful.” -Richard0593
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