Living with chronic pain

Click, tap, pain

One of my favorite fantasy characters is Sand dan Glokta from The First Law trilogy. Once a war hero, he turned into a cripple and was in constant physical pain due to being tortured for years by the enemy. Maybe he became my favorite because I related to him so much when I was reading the books. I too was in constant pain.

Down the spiral

A month passed since my pain on the right side of my hip started. I got diagnosed with Piriformis Syndrome and I spent my summer in physiotherapy.

Four months passed and the pain was still there. It spread more towards the lumbar vertebrae, but still only on the right side. I spent the rest of the year in osteopathy.

Six months passed and the pain wasn’t going anywhere. I was finally recommended an MRI of the lumbar vertebrae. The results showed bulging disks. The doctor dismissed me by saying my back is the healthiest he has seen and the bulging disks are normal for my age.

A year passed and I was still in pain. I asked for another MRI to check if anything had gotten worse. The results showed the bulging disks as before and the beginning of Baastrup Syndrome. I spent my second summer doing manual physiotherapy and the rest of the year doing exercises tailored to my “back condition”.

A year and a half, I was hopeless. I had changed 4 orthopedic doctors so far. The 5th one immediately diagnosed me with Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction. He recommended steroid injections and I desperately accepted. After the second injection, I couldn’t move for 3 weeks.

I turned to private healthcare and paying out of my own pocket. I did an MRI of the hip to check if the injections had damaged anything in the area. My hip was fine. I performed neurological examinations to check if my nerves were functioning properly. My reflexes were top. I tried energy healing for that matter. I cried a lot. I was ready for anything, but injections or operation.

I spent thousands of euros and no one could offer any definite diagnosis or a solution. Well, no one, but one.

The way out

I did spend one more summer in manual physiotherapy. By then, though, I had been given a chance to get out of the downwards spiral. That summer I was biking happily to my therapy.

Chronic pain is very common. For some reason, the doctors do not seem prepared for treating it. Fortunately for me, after I had tried everything conventional and nothing had worked, I was ready to hear a solution.

A friend of mine suggested reading The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain. I heard the audiobook instead, multiple times in fact, and I related to every single bit in the book.

The main premise of the book is that most of the chronic pain is generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. Pain is there to protect us, so when the brain gets the alarm signal that something is wrong, a cycle of pain starts. If the pain is diagnosed properly and proper treatment makes it go away, then lucky you, I guess. However, when no diagnosis can explain it and no treatment can make it go away, it may be time to do the brain talk, my friend.

And the brain talk I did.

The brain talk

Oh girl. It got really dark in there for those two painful years. All I thought and talked about was my pain. I felt angry, confused, lost, scared, lonely.

It took me months of reconditioning and rewiring my brain. I exposed myself to pain, so I could rewire the pain-fear cycle into an “I am safe, I am not in danger” cycle. Of course, as the book suggests, when the pain is too high that feeling safe doesn’t come easy, then it’s important to reduce the pain first, e.g. for me lying down did that.

Whenever I did activities that I had associated with pain like sitting (chairs were my biggest enemy), bending down, holding heavy stuff, exercising, instead of expecting the pain to ruin my time at any moment, I created a sense of safety for myself. I wasn’t trapped, I could stop doing the activity whenever. Even if the pain visited, I would welcome it and let it be, without the fear of it staying there forever.

I wanted to live my life again. I wanted to sit down with friends. I wanted to talk about other things than pain. I wanted to move, walk, dance. My attention shifted from pain inside of me to life all around me. And that is the most important brain talk to have: just live a little.

The superpower

The pain is not entirely gone. It is mostly gone, but it still visits me sometimes. That is how I know, that something is bothering me. Not to brag, but it is kind of a superpower.

It helps me take a step back, reevaluate the situation and how I am feeling about it. It helps me be honest with myself. It helps me move and do things that involve my body with presence.

I am a different person because of my chronic pain. We often talk how health is the most important thing of all. It could be, but not for its own sake. It could be, because with health and in absence of pain we can enjoy life more. But I have been enjoying life even more than before, despite and because of the pain.