Just Enough Pain

As you may know things have been rather quiet for me lately. I’ve been low, in pain and fatigued. Just like a bus that comes in threes, so are my symptoms it seems. As ever, I learn something every time I fall into this cycle. This time I learned that having no pain is just as bad than having too much.

As with a lot of things, balance is everything. I’m starting to see how the Buddha’s wisdom of the middle way applies to so much more than I’ve been led to imagine.  Let me offer what happened to me me the last two weeks as an example:

When my ankles kicked off and I had to use the stick indoors for the first time in a while I was in a fair bit of pain as well as the muscle weakness. I had just managed to see my doctor for the first time so I finally had a prescription for my strong medication (well the Danish equivalent anyway). I had used the last of my English meds a couple of weeks beforehand and I knew just how strong they where, because they were basically out of my system and I knew I had to take them 14 hours before I was due to get up otherwise I would be groggy all day and my mind would wake up late.

I have a choice each night. I can risk it and hope I don’t develop any more pain or set my mind off by over stimulating another way. Music, poker, TV, a writing idea,big fix, or any stray random thought can set my mind off on a second wind, usually requireing 4-6 hours to wind down. If it starts late at night this can mean I’m not back in bed until 4am (like last night as a matter of fact).

So when I work I can hope that doesn’t happen and therefore don’t have to call in sick the next day (having to make the call often just after I’ve finally gotten to sleep) or I can take a pill just after dinner and know both my pain will go and that once I settle down for the night I will pretty much stay asleep until the alarm goes off.

As you can probably guess after last week, which was very difficult, I took the pills; 5 nights in a row in fact. Well Although I was groggy for most of this week and still a little low, the pain was gone and I was catching up on my sleep. This, in combination with adding another bus onto my route to work to reduce the walking, was helping to reduce the ankle issue and the hyper-sensitivity.

I’ve since calculated that the number of days in a row taking the pills is the number of days it takes to ware off. Yesterday it hit me. I was feeling better as I wasn’t so cloudy in my head or lethargic, then out of nowhere my sciatic nerve flared up around my right hip and thigh. Being in pain again (but this time without muscle fatigue) showed me for the first time that week I was over doing it.

I had stopped using the cane inside because I didn’t feel the pain, but I was obviously still over doing it as I spent a good 2 hours in pain. This is when I realised that for me to properly manage the fibromyalgia, I have to be able to feel just enough to know where the line is, but not enough that it makes everything else impossible.

With a week of feeling low but not in pain, when the pain returned I also noticed how the looping of thoughts in my mind that I couldn’t get to shut up all week, was being distracted by the pain. The pain was actually taking my mind of the depression, like how I use work to distract myself from the pain. I found another loop in the vicious cycle.

Since then I’ve had a similar twinge in my foot and my wrist. However after just an hour, even without the weak pain meds, they went because I listened to my body and stopped doing what was triggering the twinge. I could feel the warning signs before they started shouting at me. I needed just enough pain to find the middle way.

I offer thee words for reflection…