Thoughts & Things

An Abridged List of Body Parts That Hurt Right Now

As someone with chronic pain, I have endless complaints of what hurts, including details of the exact kind of pain I am experiencing at the time. Sometimes one thing will hurt, sometimes another, and sometimes (if I'm really lucky) all of the things will hurt. It can make life more difficult than it ought to be. No, scratch that. It always makes life more difficult than it ought to be. I plan my days and activities around my pain, and re-plan when my pains change. Developing chronic pain has impacted my life in ways I never could have imagined in my life before.

So here I share with you a list of body parts that are causing me pain as I write this. I have abridged this list for your convenience.

My Shoulders
Like many people, I generally carry a lot of tension in my shoulders. I always have. It was the first thing that gave me trouble when I started developing chronic pain. Of course, because it's chronic, my shoulder pain is rather amplified. I have developed a severe shoulder knot that has been there for days now, and it makes me feel almost nonfunctional, even without considering my other pains. It is both sharp and aching. The pain has been severe enough that I have lost more sleep than usual over it. My sleep has been so bad that my partner has been able to tell I have been in pain even while I've been asleep, and has been rubbing the knot while I have been sleeping to soothe my restless nights.

My Calves
I deigned to wear flip flops the day before yesterday, so my calves have been killing me. I know, I know, I was practically asking for it. My calves were basically in a constant seized up state for most of yesterday, and now today they are aching. I literally spent most of my time in flip flops just sitting, but I feel as if I severely overworked them in a hardcore workout. Even walking to the bathroom is aggravating my hip pain, and forget about how much it hurts to sit down and stand up when I get there.

My Hips
My hips have been bothering me a lot more in general for the last couple months are so. I must be getting old--hips don't lie, after all. I find that this pain is generally from either failing to wear my orthotics often enough (which causes my right hip to drop due to my scoliosis), or it is my sciatic nerve being aggravated (or sometimes a little of both). Right now I feel the nerve pain. It's as if fiery blades are aggravating my hips, and shooting their flaming stabby feeling down my legs like lightning. It burns. It stings. Somehow this is the mild version. I have definitely had worse hip pain recently.

My Neck
Like my shoulders, my neck was one of the first things that ever really started to hurt for no good reason. If my shoulder pain flares up badly, my neck pain is not usually so far behind. Unfortunately separating the two would have rather unfortunate consequences, so I am stuck with this chain reaction. I have also been exposed to some rather sick people lately, and while I initially thought I wasn't going to suffer for it (ha!), I woke up with an achier than usual neck yesterday. I assumed I had simply slept funny, but I appear to have a golf ball sized swollen lymph node that hurts to the touch, and aches more with movement.

My Pride
Okay, okay, I know this isn't a body part. My pride hurts too though. It aches and stabs and throbs just as much as any other pain in my body does. I used to be an athlete, and now wearing flip flops ruins my week. I used to be clear-headed and book smart, and now it takes twice as much work to do half the thinking I did before. I don't think I've ever been overly competitive against other people, but I've always been the type to want to beat my own record, and now I have to live with failing to beat all of my mental and physical records. All that can soothe my pride is to remember to measure my successes by what I have accomplished this time, rather than by what I accomplished years ago.

(I have committed to blogging daily with Give It 100. This is Day Sixty-Nine. Seven days of leave taken total.)