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My mother has chronic pain from an accident she had almost a decade ago. I forget the exact term for it, but basically she "stretched" the nerves in her shoulder to the point where they fire pain signals on a constant basis. She's had over a dozen surgeries, including total shoulder replacement, removal of muscles, shoulder fusion, and other really intense and serious things that have done almost nothing to remove the pain. As far as relief goes, her biggest source is, honestly, pot. She has extremely heavy duty morphine based medications that she takes when things get very bad, but those leave her logey, spacey, and essentially unable to function very well throughout the day. Pot helps settle the pain down to manageable levels, and also keeps her mind clear enough to do day to day tasks and hold conversations with people. The longer it goes on the more she declines though, and it's terrible to watch, but there's just not much more that can be done. She's on anti depression medications, which helps a little with the depression, but the best way of dealing with frustration is lots of communication with friends and family members. Her disability isn't immediately apparent, aside from a shoulder that slumps a little low there's no way to tell at a glance that she's impaired, so being honest with people about what she can and can't do has curbed a lot of that. She was in denial for a few years about being handicapped, and insisted that she could lift stuff, or be out for many hours without needing to rest, or do this or that just like before, and when she couldn't she would get very upset. Once she was honest with herself about her limitations, and willing to accept and even ask for our help, that settled that down. We also make sure to plan activities around what mom can do, and to make provisions and outs in case she's having a bad pain day and can't leave the house. It's up to us, her family, to accept that plans won't always work out, and to not make it seem like "Uuuuugh mom hosed up the vacation" when things happen. Life hacks involve finding a doctor who a) specializes in chronic pain, b) will LISTEN to you, and c) is willing to work with any other doctors you might have. Mom has a pain guy and an orthopaedic guy and makes sure that any changes suggested by one and cleared with the other. Before she got a specialized pain guy the responses from doctors all basically boiled down to "wow, that sucks" and that's about it. Her pain doctor is a great guy and is always willing to listen to her if the pain changes in intensity or sensation (like, I guess sometimes it's a burning feeling, sometimes it aches, sometimes it's stabbing), and he doesn't just jump right to "More/stronger drugs for you lady!" but is willing to actually help her figure out what's going on and if anything can be done that doesn't involve lots of drugs she doesn't really want.
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May 2, 2014 21:11
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:48 |
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