A Great Disappointment

When I woke up, and I'm pretty sure other chronic pain suffers can relate, I knew today was going to be a bad day pain wise. My left thigh was incredibly sore, complete with sharp jabs down into my calf and foot and an unrelenting hurricane of impenatrible constant and precise pain in my knee and lateral-anterior (outside and front) thigh. Honestly the only other comparison was when I was hit with the baseball a couple of days ago or on other rare occasions. This was a bad day of bad days.

Trying to get out of bed it was incredibly stiff, and honestly the first reaction I had was to cry. However I didn't and I began to walk over to my cane when I hit the floor because I foolishly put weight on the leg, thus I had to crawl with my arms to get it. I then went over to my medication bottle and took one of my pain pills (hydrocodone/APAP 5-325 mg.). I then went for the door and immediately started pacing my livingroom. It may seem contridictory that pacing would help, but it helps to distract and causes the stiffness to be minimal which helps the pain some. But pacing can only do so much, so I have to sit down some and massage the thigh with my hand.

This pattern continued for literally an hour, pacing every inch that I could of the livingroom over and over, then advancing to the kitch and covering all the ground I could, then advancing to the hallway and go up and down it like a century and then move back into the livingroom to repeat the process. Naturally I would take intermittant breaks to lean against the wall or sit down to massage the leg. It may seems that I am not taking much to treat the pain, but I really can't think of anything that would remotely work at that level of pain. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst, I would say the best I got today was a 7 and at times it would accelerate to a 9. It puts a lot of strain on your body: my pulse would accelerate to 110 or 120 at times (yes I counted and checked), I perspired considerably and my breaths were pathetically shallow. And the frustrating thing is even after taking two of my Hydrocodone's there was no decrease in the pain, except for maybe a little dent in the sharpness of the jabs into my calfs and feet.

Today was not purely filled with pacing, and I can categorize my activities into two groups: home bound and outside the home. Home bound included doing the dishes and I did several excercises of my arms which did help (excercise releases endorphens which in return help pain.) I also air guitar and listen to music quite loudly as an escape, which does help too.

As for the outside the home activies a close friend (she was in the group that went with me to Warp Tour, the ex-girlfriend of the guy) texted me and suggested that we hang out. I was reluctant too because 1. I'm NO fun at all when I'm in a lot of pain and 2. I tend to want to suffer in silence (so to speak), and rarely do I tell others that I'm in pain; but I said Ok since interactions tend to help the pain. However as I was driving over to pick her up, I got a text from Savvi (my best friend who went to Oregon) that she was home! So we made arrangements to pick her up and we all hang together. So we did and we stopped over at Savvi's house and chilled for a while, and then we went out on a walk to a nearby park.

The social dynamics of this group goes as follows: I'm the only guy amongst two girls who are fairly close and have known each other for several years. In addition they haven't seen each other in 10 days and so naturally they had a lot to say to each other, and the ex-girlfriend(named Amanda) does the majority of the speaking at a rapid pace (you must understand that she can be extremely hyperactive and excited which may result in "harmless" violence to me lol). while Savvi listens. At the same time I am in a massive amount of pain and I tend to keep silent at those points because I seriously feel like that if I speak 1. I'll say something harsh and offensive (and I don't want to lash out on these two, however admittingly its tempting on very rare occasions) or 2. I feel like that if I open up I'll open up EVERYTHING, including the supressed emotions and end up crying; hence I'm not very fun (plus I can't really do a whole lot, cause even walking several blocks is a chore.) Savvi knows me very well and recognizes all the body language that suggests I'm in pain and tries to come to start a conversation, but Amanda just continues to speak and any attempt at conversation or attempt to help is lost. This I'm actually ok because Amanda needs to catch up with Savvi and I understand that so it does not particularly bother me, but it can be frustrating on specific occasions. But at times I feel like a third wheel, which is fine with me because their conversations are entertaining and I do enjoy their company very much, and as I said before I prefer suffering alone (but Savvi is essentially the only person I openly tell about my pain, and Amanda if she asks.) I guess the hardest part is that Amanda barrads me with insults and sarcastic remarks, and on occasion Savvi joins in, and it can be overwhelming at times to cope with the pain and the remarks; but at the same time I don't really have much room to talk because I'm the exact way with her, but its difficult sometimes to control my emotions and reactions when they are this way because I'm truely overwhelmed by the pain. It does provide an interesting challenge though, which makes it fun in a sense.

After the park we went over to Amandas place and chilled in her room after walking the dog around her block a couple times. It was interesting and slightly entertaining because 1. Savvi does not like dogs so she would avoid at all costs and 2. the dog was quite big and would pull Amanda from one side of the road to the next so it was like she was a ball in a pinball machine.

In general today was another bitter sweet day: it was GREAT to see Savvi again (although it may not have seemed that way to her because of my intraversion) and its always fun to hang out with Amanda, but at the same time there was a constant sense of wanting to cry and scream from the pain which never seemed to give out which then gave a certain sense of volunerbility on my part and exageration of emotions. I also wish that Savvi and I talked more (in fact throughout the whole ordeal we only spoke at two sentence chunks at a time because she was talking and catching up with Amanda) but it was good to see her happy and Amanda happy.