Sunday 17 February 2013

Still the orchestra plays....

I decided it was about time I tackled the tricky subject of constant pain. When I say tricky, I refer to the difficulty in finding something constructive to say about it. I could of course sit here and say "I'm in pain all the time, it's pretty rubbish" and there'd be nothing wrong or dishonest in that, but that's not what this blog is about. I will follow this fairly short post with my thoughts about how to combat the contents, but I wanted to hopefully give people something to think about themselves before I add my own thoughts.

So, I'd ask the reader to visualise their morning routine: got it? Now break it down into each individual action and think of each different pair of joints and each muscle group you are using for each action. 

Let's go through mine - getting out of bed. Well that's most of your body straight away. Making breakfast - predominantly the hands and fingers, and of course the jaw whilst you eat. Getting dressed - again, lots of hands and fingers, but also the rest of the body too. Brushing teeth - most of the arm, wrist and hand. That's all before leaving the flat. And let's not forget the amount of general walking about between rooms during this period. 

Now take your own equivalent, and imagine that every movement of each joint caused white-hot pain to shoot through the affected joint. Imagine that each movement of a muscle caused the dragging sensation of over-work, meaning the muscle is heavy and the movement tiring. Imagine that each time you picked something up, your fingers only just had the dexterity to keep hold of the object. 

Imagine this isn't occasional. Imagine this for every single move you make - every forgotten and casual movement, every little necessity, every time you need to get up. Every time you need to do anything at all.  

Now imagine that when you're not moving, all those muscles hurt anyway. They ache as if overworked, they twitch and spasm causing renewed pain.

Imagine lying in bed perfectly motionless, and still feeling as if every nerve ending in the body is on fire. 

Imagine if all of this was invisible, and people refused to believe what their eyes could not verify for them. 

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