Living with Chronic Pain
I’ve been living with my chronic pain condition for over 20 years and have learned that pain flare ups are inevitable for me. This past week we moved back home to Sacramento from the Palm Springs area after spending two years in the desert. Between all the stress of moving, my wife’s mother dying the day the movers came, and me doing a lot of physical work, I noticed my pain levels started increasing each day.
I was forced once again to “practice what I preached” and had to implement my own pain flare up plan. As I did this I began thinking that this would be a good time to blog about managing pain flare ups. There’s an exercise in my Addiction-Free Pain Management™ Workbook designed to help people manage pain flare ups. If you’d like to obtain a free copy of this exercise please go to my Contact Us page at http://www.addiction-free.com/contact.html to request my Pain Flare Up Plan and we will be happy to email it to you.
I would like to share with you what happened to my pain levels and how I managed them. Most of the time I’m relatively pain free or at very low levels of pain—say 2-3 on a 1-10 pain scale. On the day the movers came and we found out my wife’s mother was dying my pain levels increased to 4-5. By time I met the moving truck in Sacramento my pain was 5-6 and by the time they had the truck unloaded and I had a whole lot of boxes unpacked my pain was now at 7-8.
The first thing I did was lay down and close my eyes and worked on determining how much of my pain was psychological/emotional and stress related. By doing some deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation within ten to fifteen minutes I was able to get my pain down to a 5-6 range. I also took some Advil to help reduce the inflammation.
My next step was slow easy stretching followed by a soak in our hot tub and then some more gentle stretching. The next step was to lay down with an ice pack for twenty minutes. All of this took about an hour and by that time my pain was now at a 3-4 range for most of the evening. After a good night sleep I woke up with a 2-3 level of pain and ready to start another busy day of unpacking.
