Posts Tagged ‘pain’
Pained Puppy
Our doggie girl is a hurtin’ unit right now. Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to cause her all this pain, but she is wincing with a shrill whine with disturbing frequency. Like dogs do, in between the bouts of sharp pain, she acts like all is well and good, but we know better.
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Cyndie took Delilah to the vet last week and their guess-timate of a diagnosis was possible arthritis or bulging disc in her back. They prescribed an anti-inflammatory pain reliever. A few days later, when Delilah woke in extreme pain and was trembling, Cyndie made another trip to the vet.
That visit included a blood test to rule out Lyme disease and ended up with a prescription for muscle relaxants. They still think the problem is in her back. Oh, and they also issued a strict order of total restriction of activity for two weeks. How are we supposed to accomplish that?
Yesterday, Cyndie called me at work and asked me to stop at the vet on my way home to pick up a new pain med. Delilah did not have a good day.
Today, we are hoping for any sign of improvement, because nothing so far seems to be bringing her relief. At this point, the total activity restriction seems like it will cause her more angst than the pain. Poor girl doesn’t understand why she isn’t patrolling the perimeter three times a day anymore.
I think she’s worried some unauthorized intruders might trespass on her turf if she is not on the job doing her regular rounds.
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Disaster Averted
Not my eyes again! Why did it have to be my eye?
We use a retractable leash for Delilah and yesterday’s wet snow was sticking to it something fierce, occasionally plugging the return function. When I took her in the barn on my way to feed the horses, I hung the leash on the hook I use every time we go through this routine.
From that distance, Delilah can wander out far enough to see the horses while I do a little housekeeping under the overhang, prior to serving their feed pans. Before bringing out the feed, I stop to temporarily lock the retraction on the leash, after shortening the reach to a point where Delilah can’t disturb the herd while they eat.
Her past performances have dictated her fate. She can sit by herself in the barn while they munch.
With the retracting feature off, the extended wet leash was laying on the sand floor of the barn. When I was done with horse duties and ready to take Delilah for an extended walk, I grabbed the leash with an instantaneous thought that I should run it through my gloved hand to scrape the grit off it before it spooled up.
I didn’t quite think it through all the way.
With my right gloved hand, I grabbed the leash between Delilah and the ground. Leaving the spool on the hook, I reached up with my left hand to release the lock. I don’t know if it is obvious to you as you read this, but I had grabbed the wrong side of the leash with my right hand.
The result was so fast I didn’t have time to blink as the spool spun and whiplashed the wet gravelly leash across my face in the ultimate insult.
WHAP! Take that!
My right eye closed in time, but the left eye got a rude stinging slap and enough sand to wreck a day. What happens when something touches your eyeball? You close it as fast as you can! I closed mine over some grains of sand that immediately lodged under my eyelid.
It hurt to blink. It hurt to leave it open. It hurt to hold it closed. It hurt bad enough to make me cry, but I think the tear ducts were plugged with sand, because there weren’t enough tears to wash it out and end my dilemma.
Delilah was kind enough to just sit there while I flinched and cursed and cried and stumbled around. When I knew it wasn’t going to self-remedy, I had to cancel Delilah’s walk and rush back to the house for help.
It’s always wonderful when the person convalescing suddenly has to step up and become the care-giver. Cyndie didn’t hesitate to rush her walker into the bathroom with me to start hosing the eye down with her saline solution.
I really don’t like getting squirted in the eye. That stung and made my eye try to close, which hurt tremendously because there was still sand under the eyelid. I wished I could fold my eyelid like some kids used to do when I was in grade school.
Cyndie worked heroically to clean it out as much as possible and added a drop of something to sooth the eye. I tried laying face down and just letting my eye rest. I figured it was possible that I had scratched my eye and that was what was hurting every time I blinked, so I was about to just wait it out.
Then I stood up again and grabbed my eyelash for the umpteenth time to pull it away from my eye. It was something of an instinctual reaction. I just felt like there was something under my eye lid.
With a blink, I determined that’s exactly what I was feeling, because the stinging pain was suddenly gone. Just like that, I was back to my old self, blinking pain-free.
Disaster averted.
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Yes, Shingles
For all the personal detail I freely display in my posts on a regular basis, I found myself holding back recently from blathering on about the daily progress of my shingles outbreak. I think part of it was a hope of saving you from frequently repeated lamentations over the pain and suffering I was enduring, but another part of it was my plan to give this affliction as little attention as possible. My intent was to get over this quickly and with a minimum of symptoms.
It all started on the Monday after I had trimmed dead wood from our apple tree and a nearby maple tree, using a pruning saw on an extended pole. It seemed entirely logical that I would feel sore muscles in the area of my torso after the workout I had done the day before. Upon a feeling of even more stiffness the next day, I became more assured my discomfort was a function of delayed onset muscle soreness from the weekend’s exercise.
By Wednesday I was growing normalized to the soreness and stopped thinking about it. After my shower in the evening, I noticed a red spot on my abdomen, but it didn’t mean much to me at the time. However, it seemed odd when the redness was still there the next morning. Without previously having had the slightest inkling that I might be getting sick, when I saw the spot still present in the morning, I reacted by lifting my arm and turning in the mirror.
How did I suddenly know?
There were enough splotches in a line around to my back that I instantly thought, “Shingles.” When I got to work I did a little research and checked in with my clinic back in Wisconsin. They directed me to immediately visit an urgent care site near my workplace. The doctor there did little more than listen to my description and look at my torso before confirming my self-diagnosis.
She prescribed an anti-viral to be taken 3-times a day for a week, to minimize and hopefully shorten the duration of my symptoms. She asked what I knew about shingles and began to describe the varying levels of hell that can occur.
I interrupted her to say that I did read that some people may not have severe symptoms. When she nodded in acknowledgement, I proclaimed that I would be one of those people, so she didn’t need to bother describing the worst it could get.
For the most part, I would say I achieved my goal of not having the rash erupt in multiple waves of increasing severity. It got worse for about 3 days and then began to slowly recede. There is still some residual visual evidence left, but my skin is mostly healed. The deep (what felt like muscle) pain was a chronic annoyance for about 2-and-a-half weeks, but seems to be fading now.
I’m so close to being done with it that I want to claim victory. There is just one small problem. Even though I succeeded in willing myself to the easy end of the shingles spectrum, it appears that I am getting a good dose of a common complication: post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN).
The most common complication of shingles is a condition called post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). People with PHN have severe pain in the areas where they had the shingles rash, even after the rash clears up.
The pain from PHN may be severe and debilitating, but it usually resolves in a few weeks or months in most patients. Some people can have pain from PHN for many years. ——–cdc.gov/shingles/about/complications
I wouldn’t exactly call what I am feeling as pain. It is more a hyper-sensitivity. At times, it feels like a sunburn on my skin. Other times it feels “crawly” like having a fever. I get frequent shivers, and the act of shivering is uncomfortable. I want to avoid it, but I can’t.
So it’s that kind of pain. Not so much a “hurt,” as a very uncomfortable nuisance.
Yes, that’s my version of shingles.
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Monumental Improvement
Tuesday morning I received the most wonderful news from Cyndie as she made her way down the hall from the bedroom after waking. I expected from the sound of her voice that the message was going to be good, but she caught me by surprise with how good.
It wasn’t simply that, for the first time since her hip replacement surgery over two weeks ago, she had gotten a good night’s sleep, it was the best she has slept in years! I do believe she is experiencing the improvement that so many people have described to us after having gone through their own similar surgeries.
The pain from that old arthritic joint is gone. Her description of the improvement helps me to better grasp how much pain she has been living with, and for how long she has been struggling to endure it. As often as I witnessed her pain in person over the years, I still lacked an accurate sense of what exactly she was dealing with.
She hasn’t even enjoyed a good, full night of sleep in years. Her amazing ability to cope with it as well as she has all this time had led me to interpret it as not being that major a problem. The sudden return of the light in her eyes and joy in her voice has opened my eyes to the fact of how much her spirit and energy have been repressed for far too long.
She seems so much better now that I am wondering if maybe I should look into a lower back replacement for the days my degenerating discs make me uncomfortable. She’s doing that well!
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Costly Neglect
I have done it again. For whatever reason I have yet to fully grasp, I have grown complacent about adhering to my prescribed daily regiment of walking 1/2 hour per day, and doing repetitions of a few simple strengthening exercises. Along with that neglect, I have heaped on a variety of risky behaviors like lifting things that are heavier than I should be lifting, raking and tilling muddy clay, or, as I discovered yesterday, bending over to entice one of the cats with fresh catnip.
I have degenerative disc disease. In the morning at work yesterday, I noticed a twinge that alerted me to be cognizant of my condition. I took note, but only superficially. As in, I will do something about this later. It didn’t take long to really get my attention, and cause me to change my behavior, after the phone in my pants pocket began to ring, and I tried to quickly get up to leave the area and answer the call. That focus on quickly getting to another room overlooked the part about getting up out of the chair first, and my body abruptly nabbed my attention with a searing pain in my lower back that caused an immediate abort, and sat me right back down in that chair.
I got the message, or so I thought. I took some ibuprofen, and did a few bendy-stretchies after lying on the carpet in the boss’s office for a time. When I got home at the end of the work-day, I took a second dose of ibuprofen and laid on the floor to rest. After a while, I felt a significant reduction of pain, and was able to do a few of my exercises. I figured I could renew my walking routine before the day’s end.
With the pain now subsided, I absent-mindedly began moving around the house. (How quickly do I forget?) I was showing Cyndie how the cats appeared to have only minor interest in the fresh catnip I brought home from work, and leaned forward, dangling it for Pequenita…
BAM!
I think a disc blew out.
I know an expletive flew out.
That is the weirdest pain. It is like getting punched in the kidney, but not really. There is no external sensation of the blow landing. It is what it must feel like to have your innards punched. Whatever that nerve is, running along those discs, it sure doesn’t like being pressed. The muscles of my whole body seem to recoil. They want to all give out, and drop me to the floor, except, the nerve doesn’t like that either, so then the muscles have to flex. Suddenly I find myself locked in a precarious position where I can’t go up, and I can’t go down.
It’s comical, really. Unless you are the spouse standing right there, in full alarm mode, trying to figure out how to help. That part isn’t so funny.
In truth, I have learned that the body tends to over-react, in attempt to protect me from doing something that might lead to pain. At the first hint of trouble, it tenses up, pulling me back from doing anything brash. I end up walking like a little old man, taking little baby steps.
I’m grateful for that protection, actually. I’ve explained what happens when I get too nonchalant. It’s tricky, but somewhere in there, I would like to find the happy medium.
By the end of the evening, I was able to get myself walking again, albeit gingerly.
I am back to practicing being mindful of my actions, and have renewed motivation to resume the exercise routine I have been neglecting. Let’s hope.
Pain Again
In the ongoing excitement of degenerative disc disease, I had a very interesting experience yesterday. I have done well to maintain my routine of daily 1/2-hour walks, and have been working my stretching and strength building exercises. Maybe I have done too well. I have had so little discomfort that there are moments when I forget that I am at risk.
Granted, I had allowed myself to become distracted, and I was thinking ahead to what I would do next, while I carried our exercise ball downstairs, but it didn’t seem like a risky action. It is hard to constantly keep your mind focused on thinking about how you are moving. All I did was lean forward a small amount in the action of intending to set the ball down on the floor. BAM! Sudden take-my-breath-away pain erupted in my lower back.
It put me to the floor. I searched for a position that might not hurt so much, but couldn’t identify whether laying on my stomach, or over on my back, offered any advantage. It just hurt.
I relaxed enough to catch my breath, struggled to my feet, and then tried to carry on with activity. I put some cold packs on my back and took some ibuprofen. This incident felt a bit worse than any of my previous flare-ups, but still seemed manageable. We had some company over for brunch and I alternated between sitting and standing. After they left, I headed for some carpeted floor and laid down where I could completely relax. I was laying on top of a cold pack that rested in the small of my back and it felt good. I could push my back onto the cold and against the support of the floor. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing to do.
When I decided to get up, I discovered that I couldn’t find a way to do it. With great effort, and against new waves of pain, I found I was able to roll over, but I could not find a way to get myself upright. Cyndie and Julian needed to do the work of lifting me up from under my arms, but I found I could hardly stand up and support my own weight without scary amounts of discomfort. This was all completely new to me.
I have no idea what the exact physics of that episode was all about, but I will refrain from laying flat on the floor, with an ice pack under my lower back, for some time to come. Slowly over the remainder of the day, and after multiple doses of ibuprofen, I felt I was gaining the ability to function without debilitating pain, but this is a definite set back in my ongoing effort to live comfortably and function relatively normally, despite degenerative disc disease.
Ouch.
Real Pain
It is often said to ‘write what you know.’ It is not exactly a topic that I feel particularly inspired to write about, but currently, real pain is what I know. Diagnosis: Pleurisy. 
I will always remember the words of my father, when he described his experience of having a heart attack. He told me it was unlike anything he had ever previously known; a pain he would never wish on a worst enemy.
If what I am experiencing were occurring on the left side of my body, I would say it must be a heart attack. It is most likely a virus that is having its way with me right now. Started on Sunday as dull, persistent pain in the back of my neck, from the back of my head down to between my shoulder blades. Nothing I did seemed to lessen the discomfort. I was able to play soccer on Monday morning, but by the time I got to work, the muscle aches had migrated to my entire trunk.
Yet, muscle ache was the only complaint I had. No specific headache, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, cough, or stomach upset. Tuesday, the pain began to settle into my chest, specifically the right side of my rib cage. By the time I got home from work, I needed something to ease the pain and allow me to catch my breath. I went for the bottle of ibuprofen, every 4 hours. That left me in desperation at about 2 a.m.
I awoke to such discomfort that it was almost impossible for that next dose of ibuprofen to put a dent in the pain. Each breath is cut short by a stabbing pain, long before I can accomplish the relief of the fill of oxygen I frantically desire. And with each jolt of anguish, there is a residual throb of ache that radiates up and out my collar bone, down my arm, up through my neck and into my jaw. I imagined a heart problem or a blood clot, and with Cyndie out of town, wondered how I would know whether this was something that deserved a call to 9-1-1.
A little research into pleurisy allowed me to settle my fears and, when the ibuprofen finally dulled the worst of the stabs, fall back to sleep while sitting in an upright position. I soaked in a hot, hot shower for a long time in the morning, then decided I could manage a day a work. It just so happens, the boss is out of town on vacation for a week and I am left in charge. I was gingerly able to respond to the particularly large volume of issues awaiting me in the email inbox. It was after lunch when I got surprised by an involuntary cough reflex. It felt like something in my chest ripped.
I let out a curse and struggled to retain any composure. I went up to the front office and tried lying on the carpeted floor. It only hurt worse. I was really panting at this point, and when found by a coworker, I knew her admonishment to get to urgent care was the only logical choice.
Diagnosis: Pleurisy. Unfortunately, there is nothing they can do to solve my problem. The virus has to take its course. At least they are able to offer assurance for a number of critical ailments that it is NOT. I came away with a prescription for something with a tad bit more oomph than the basic ibuprofen I was relying on before. But, it doesn’t prevent that inevitable pain inflicted by those involuntary muscle reactions of a cough, hiccup, sneeze, or even an awkward swallow. Stabbing pain.
I really hope I never have to experience being conscious during a heart attack. Does that count as positive thinking?
Relative Something 