The pain of chronic pain!

I am struggling. I am sure anyone with chronic pain struggles with discouragement. I am also struggling with self image and self esteem. My pain shows and there is nothing I can do about that. I walk with a definite limp/hitch in my step. My right hip and right knee are painful with walking and sometimes just standing still for a length of time (as in when I am working in the kitchen or worse stopped at work to chat with a patient). The pain increases significantly.

I even had a patient ask me 'how long have you been crippled'! I have never considered myself crippled. Geez. Very depressing! Getting up and sitting down are difficult for me. I used to be an athlete. I ran 3-9 miles a day in high school. Had 5 children and was always very active with them. When my children left home I continued to be active. About 15 years ago my right knee started hurting once in awhile. And once in awhile it was bad enough I sought help from a chiropractor who said my knee was fine, adjusted my hips and off I went feeling better. The frequency of my pain increased with frequency and intensity to the point where about 10 years ago I began to experience pain every day. I began seeking answers.

I am unable to take any of the opioids, they make me deathly sick. I would rather be in pain. So I sought PT, therapeutic massage, chiropractic, supplements, ND's, DO's, Orthopedic advice and at present I am going to a special kind of Physical therapy called restorative muscle balancing. I had prolozone therapy and stem cell therapy. I've taken Ibuprofen 400-800mg experementing with combining the ibuprofen with some tylenol. Everything helps for a little while but nothing seems to help for the long term. My present supplement program consists of NAC three times a day, methyl folate once a day and methyl cobalimine B-12 once a day and just a week ago I started taking the collagen chews with  Hyluronic acid for bone support once a day.

At what point will I feel better? Is that never? I do try to compensate for and deal with the pain in healthy ways. I distract, I also do mega research on how to address the underlying cause of my pain.

Pain, depression and discouragement serve as an impetus to research deeper, more intense and revisit some research. I use my discouragement to spur me to renew my search for answers! I seek out new research and revisit old. Just this last week I took a hard honest look at my diet and found I had let some processed foods and sugar sneak back into my daily eating so I stopped eating sugar and once again removed processed foods from my diet! I do feel better without the sugar.

I revisited Acupressure  and trigger point therapy! I have started doing acupressure on key points and I seem to be finding some pain relief. I also researched cobblestone walking. The internet has sure made research so much easier. Thank goodness. I don't have cobblestones to walk on but I do have a wooden roller I can use to massage my feet!

My point with this post is to encourage. I know chronic pain is discouraging! There may be no answer but you will never know if you do not look. I refuse to say there is nothing I can do about my pain. There is a lot I can do! Most of it take effort on my part and I constantly have to battle wanting a one pill solution. Dealing with chronic pain and health issues is a multifaceted adventure. 

Till next time. Keep your chin up and never give up!

Healthbug

Brief AARP Article Review!

The following in a  post I was working on ....... well you can see, two years ago September of 2016. However, upon reviewing what I had written, I found it good and noteworthy, so I am going to post  what I did review. I hope you enjoy my viewpoints.

 

9/18/2016

Today I would like to review an article I read in the AARP Bulletin Dated September 2016. Yup, That means it is totally current, mainstream and legit, right?

Well lets just take a look at it first before making decisions. The title of the article is “How the Healthcare System can Harm You’.  (front page title) Then on the article page in large bold letters 12 WAYS THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM MAY BE HARMING YOU.  Well that doesn’t sound good. Can we believe this. Let me clarify, as a nurse, I find the system of care to be miss named, more correctly it should be disease care, or disease management.  If you are reading this, I am thinking you somewhat agree with me.

Why should we even read such things, right, because all it does is put fear in our hearts and leaves us not knowing what to do. After all, Isn’t this is the only care system that we have? Not true. There is a growing number of practitioners who approach your health with a preventative, core issue, healing modality. These Practitioners are MD’s, ND’s, DC’s and Holistic nurses like myself. At the core of all of those who practice in a more holistic, healthy, foundational way, not just disease management but healing and health prevention, is you. Did I say that loud enough? YOU! You are at the core of your health! There is no argument here. Ask any practitioner and they will tell you that they are limited by the client’s (plug in patient here) ability to understand what needs to be done and will follow through with the lifestyle changes that need to happen for them to obtain/maintain improved health.

So knowledge is king here. Reading an article like this can open your eyes to what happens when you don’t take your health seriously.

1.     Wrong Diagnosis-

According to this article, 10% if patient’s deaths and up to 17 percent of all episodes of preventable harm in hospitals are possibly due to errors in diagnosis. It seems the recipe way of diagnosing is not all that valid.  The take charge of your health perspective: Know what the Doc is thinking and if the shoe doesn’t fit, let him know about it. Always, always, always have another family, friend, person there to help you think all this through. If you don’t protect your health no one else has the time to.

2.     Sloppy practices

OOPs, sorry, we cut off the wrong limb. Guess we’ll get it right the next time. Are you shuddering at this reality? You should be. We all should be. The article explains that in a recent study of 12 U.S. cities 45 percent of patients didn’t receive the recommended care for their condition. This happens, the article says, because “patients are complicated”. Where the article talks about people having A,B, C, and D disease to treat with the treatment of condition A conflicting with condition C and D.  That is the disease model of care take on the problem. The Integrative, Functional, holistic models of care address a person’s overall health issues. The “diseases” here that the article is talking about are nothing more than chronic health problems which are brought on by diet and lifestyle choices as well as environmental toxins.  Bottom line; if the root cause is never addressed, you will never reach a treatment that will help your body heal from all of you chronic illnesses. 

3.     Lax Hygiene

Folks, this is just the good ole wash your hands, keep things clean issue.  While there has been some great strides in decreasing diseases spread in the hospital, according to the article, patient’s still pick up an estimated 721,800 infections a years in health care setting! Their take, if you see one of your care givers(DR, RN) not wash their hands, say something to them. The Take Charge of your Health take is to STAY OUT OF HOSPITALS AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. Again, take a buddy with you if you have to be there for some reason.

4.     Poor communication

Yet another reason to stay out of the hospital if you can. It is near impossible to not loose information from nursing shift to shift report and from change of DR to DR. Don’t hesitate to fill in you care giver if it appears they are not treating you appropriately.

5.     Dismal discharge Planning

Understanding what to do after discharge . Making sure the discharged patient understand what to do after discharge can be fatal for the patient. Make sure you are sent home with instructions that address all your questions. If it is written down you will be able to refer to it if you forget what you were told. And do not be afraid to call the provider of care if you do have a question that was not addressed in the instructions.

The following key issues were covered in this article but I no longer know where the article is. Please note, the above information and comments are still relevant today Oct. 1, 2018. Not much has improved. The system is trying, but as with any large system, there are problems and that is why I always promote taking charge of your own health. Being responsible for yourself, your diet, lifestyle, medications, medical treatments! Sounds like a big undertaking, and it is, but oh so worth the effort. Without our health life can be miserable. Once lost, health is hard to regain. And even with our best efforts, we can still deal with some pretty daunting health issues.

 

6.     Drug Blunders

7.     Knowledge Gaps

8.     Dangerous Doctors

9.     Buried information

10. An Out-paitent Black hole

11. Small thinking

12. Clinician Burnout.

If I can find the AARP article I will finish my review of it. Until then, this gives than, this gives a small insight into one nurses viewpoint of the first 5 key issues of the article.

See you next week! Thank you for reading my blog.

Healthbug