Anxiety

How do I begin to talk about my anxiety.  My anxiety about?  My back, my future, returning to work, being social again, my children, what other people think, the list goes on and on.  That is why this month is the one year anniversary of being "In therapy".  


I was reading another chronic pain patients blog and I chose a label "anxiety" because you always want to know how others deal with it.  We all have some but some but how we deal with it is what counts.  I believe if your living with chronic pain you can't get away from it.  Anyway, she discusses under this label what she does the days leading up to surgery to reduce her anxiety.  ( I went to the beach)  The blogger mentions reading and gives 2 books and name of relaxation cd she purchases.  The day before she has a pedicure and stops by a pie shop and stuffs her face with her favorite pie.  There was 1 comment and I read it, that did it.  Started me on this harp again.  

Anonymous said...

Wow! You could do all these things before SCS implantation? Because of chronic leg pain, I can't walk the dog, and I certainly could not sit in a pie shop long enough to eat a piece of pie. And I have waited a long time studying SCS. I think I will go ahead with the SCS trial. I would consider SCS a success if it allowed me to walk the dog and sit in a restaurant long enough to eat a meal.

There is a book titled "You don't look sick"  Living well with Invisible Chronic Illness.  It has been added to my book list to read.  Just because someone looks just fine does not mean that their pain isn't just as real as someone missing a limb or who can't walk their dog.  I don't mean any disrespect to anyone out there hurting because I know with out a doubt that I could be worse.  I believe emotional pain can hurt just as bad. (depression)  Please don't judge us by the way we look.  Most of us are really good at faking it.  Out of the 10+ years I've been dealing with this ugly battle I continued to work through all but one.  This last one.  Only weeks after being laid off of my job I was wondering, "How did I do this?"  How did I get out of bed and keep going.  

The following 6 months my calendar was full of appointments with doctors.  I had met my maximum out of pocket for that year so being unemployed allowed me to not feel guilty about talking care of myself and seek new options.  What did I have to loose?  Not time off from my job or a co-pay, so after weeks of feeling punched in the stomach I took advantage of the misfortune in my life at the time. So many times seeing new doctors I have felt like they didn't believe the level of my pain.  I can stand up straight, I can walk, drive myself and work.  How bad can you be hurting?  I'm here to tell you, after enough time goes by you just manage.  Some days I can't hardly walk.  It takes me an hour to get going in the morning.  While I was working I gave my self time to "get moving".  Please don't look at someone dealing with chronic pain and compare your self because you can't.  Everyone is different.  There are some people who may have not continued to work through the pain I was dealing with.  I just made it happen.  People I worked with would tell you that I was a different person every day depending on my pain level was.  Giving up was NOT an option, he had to force me to!  

Sadly enough I woke up at 6am feeling that nasty demon back there again.  I haven't come out and said it, but my back pain has been hiding itself since surgery.  I've just chalked it up to being so inactive.  I had confided to D that thought and told him what if my problem has been scar tissue at the surgery site and when they placed the leads maybe they broke it up and now my back is not going to hurt anymore.  Can I get them to take this out?  Would that even be good?  That my back stopped hurting and I've had this implant done and I don't need it.  Crazy, I know.  It's what I do to myself before and after every procedure I've ever had done.  What if?  D had heard it one million times at the least.  Today I woke up to know for sure, that didn't happen.  I guess these last two better days has had me active enough to bring the nasty demon back.  So here comes the true test if it's working or not.  I will have to wait until Wednesday and see R to have some new programs.  None of the 3 I have are reaching my demon area.  So we wait.  I'm used to it.  Does that mean my anxiety is under control? Of course not, I'm still very anxious that I've done yet another procedure for no reason.  Only anxious about it.  Not believing it.  Two different things.  I remain positive, fighting the negative thoughts.  

I really wish I would have been connected a long time ago with others fighting chronic pain the way I am now.  I've always had my nose in a book, but being on the computer isn't easy to get comfortable.  I wasn't even aware of "blogging" until recently.  When I was working the last thing I wanted to do when I got home from work was get on the computer again.  Most of the time I had to lie down for awhile first before thinking of cooking or anything else that need to be done.  


A point of interest I read on another blog I follow is that people who read your blog can become frustrated if they would like to leave a comment and can't because they are not a member of blogger.
I checked under my settings and sure enough mine was set to registered users only.  I changed it, and sorry if I aggravated any of my readers.   I wasn't even thinking about someone commenting so I never looked under those settings. 


Tomorrow is a new day and the day after I will believe that R can reduce this old demon picking on me today. :-(