Serious Chronic Pain

[Auticorn]

Does anyone deal with it? How do you manage it? Are you the type who just pushes through it?

For me, I seem to have developed chronic back pain. It's weird because it hurts the worst over time when I walk. >< So, I started using a cane... but even that doesn't work. My doctor wants me to walk more and doesn't seem to understand that walking is basically crippling for me. She says that the reason my back is so bad is due to being overweight and such. I mean, I really would try walking more if my back wasn't so horrible and such. :| I don't know how to make her understand the struggle.

So yeah.

 

[Harmonie]

I understand. It's been a year and a half now since my feet started hurting. I did not understand what was going on (and was super busy with my senior year Spring semester at college) so I didn't get it checked out until several months after it started, and it is quite apparent that was a mistake because it has been so bad it has really impaired me.

I've been to two different doctors, have been to two different physical therapists, have super expensive special shoes with a lot of padding, have inserts, have special socks, have done the stretches, have had a lot of steroid injections, and have been taking an anti-inflammatory for a long time and the pain only really ever recedes after months of inactivity (but it's not healed).

I learned this the bad way. I returned to my old stocking job after graduating from college. I was really good at it before, and we thought that maybe increasing my activity would help make me better. That was 100% wrong, as working that job full-time put me in a really bad place, where I wanted to spend all day long in bed, and just even getting up to go to the bathroom in the night felt like too much, as getting up out of bed just hurt so incredibly bad.

I went on leave for several months and thought I had healed, as pain was very light, if not nearly non-existent most of the time. That was wrong. I only work a couple of days a week now and the pain just comes right back when I'm working. I can't walk around without hurting, I can't even stand without hurting. The job has a lot of things about it that make very desirable for me, but now it's coming down hard on me that I can't do it anymore.

I was given the option to get surgery while I was on leave, and I darn well should have taken it, but I thought I was healing. Now I'm really in a bad spot. I can't afford to go leave again, and my current two day work weeks hurt me so bad, while barely allowing me to even pay the bills I have (which thankfully are not too extreme, as I live at home, but...)

I've experienced some serious depression with this. I just feel like I can't do anything anymore. I so miss the days when I could just walk around, stand up, be active, etc. without having to give any of it a second thought. Now I'm so limited.

 

[Roxas]

Does anyone deal with it?

Yes. Every day for the last decade at least.

How do you manage it?

Generally I don't.

Are you the type who just pushes through it?

I have no other choice. I have no access to care.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

I've dealt with back pain for the better part of 10 years now. I mostly manage by just ignoring it/being used to it but it does flare up at times and I have to take pain relievers for it.

 

[Her]

Physical pain not really, aside from back pain that flares up if I overestimate my bending ability when moving wood or something. But definitely chronic pain in a trauma sense - I don't wish to go into it, but there are definitely some debilitating elements of childhood trauma that I still live with, and will always live with, even if I have slowly managed to work out methods to stop the trauma from limiting my daily life in the way that it used to. It's not physical pain in the sense of a crushing injury, but there used to be times where the impact of the trauma would control me completely. I would barely leave my bed for weeks at a time, not talk to people for even longer, and I am much better than that nowadays.

 

[an illegible mess.]

i also have chronic back pain. i have spina bifida occulta that caused mild back pain for a majority of my life, but it was exasperated after i was injured at a previous job (that i had to quit because the pain was so bad). my back hasn't been the same since and sometimes i require assistance to walk, typically if i've been on my feet for a while. most people know and are helpful but i tend to think i'm a burden so i don't really tell people when i'm hurting. i grimace and take it.

 

[Aslan]

Had chronic jaw pain for years but didn't take too much initiative to correct it until this year. It was sore, tight and cracked all the time if I even opened it at a normal range but I just tried to ignore it the best I could. My dentist prescribed some jaw exercises to help but they weren't that effective - the dentist didn't know what to do exactly other than to monitor its progression and hope it didn't become too dangerous. Five years later, I finally went to a facial physiotherapist which I should have done YEARS ago because by then my jaw movement had become so limited and painful. It took a while but my facial physio helped me to understand so much more the source of my pain and how to manage it than my dentist and for that I'm super grateful to her. It's not entirely normal again but it is much better so the pain is manageable now, for sure :)