Why Chronic Pain Reminds Me Of Riding a Roller Coaster

Dealing with chronic pain is like riding a roller coaster. You go through the ups and downs, the dark tunnels of the unknown, the scary hills that make you want to scream and cry, but ultimately you still have moments where you laugh and have fun. Those moments are the good days of chronic pain.

For some, good days aren’t days at all – they’re moments and they’re rare. When they come around they’re savored like a hot fudge sundae on a humid day. For others, they go through phases or stretches of good and bad days.

Personally, after a couple years, my stretch of bad days has turned into a stretch of good days. I have pelvic function disorder (among other things). Instead of relaxing my muscles, my body contracts them. Everyone with pelvic function disorder is a bit different, but these are my symptoms.

My entire back, but mostly my mid to lower back will have spasms that feel like charlie horses and I am unable to control them. Along with my back, my “dupa” also spasms and gets extremely knotted up so it feels like I’m sitting on rocks. Did I mention I also get spasms in my abdomen? I never even knew how knotted up my abdomen could get. Due to all my muscles spasming it causes other issues for me. I have constipation issues and urinary retention issues, where I am unable to completely void, which leads to frequent urinary tract infections, which ends up leading to more discomfort. This doesn’t even cover all my symptoms…This is just a few.

I mentioned how my bad days started turning into good days, and that was true. It was true because I started doing weekly physical therapy and doing stretching at home everyday multiple times a day because of how tight my muscles were. I’ve been very diligent with my health and my stretching and decided to do some light exercising, because according to my physical therapist, it would help relax my muscles. Especially doing things like yoga. That’s when the roller coaster took a sharp turn and dropped down a big hill.

Originally I felt great after I exercised. I felt I didn’t push too hard and overall my muscles were very relaxed. Later that night I knew something was very wrong. I couldn’t sleep at all and could feel all my muscles tensing up and squeezing, almost as if it were slow motion. When I woke up the next day things were worse. I kept stretching throughout the day and had loved ones give me massages with no relief. At the end of the day I just broke down. I felt defeated, but I knew this roller coaster was about to go around again.

Dealing with chronic pain is filled with disappointments, frustrations, and so many discouraging things where all you wanna do is give up sometimes, but it’s also filled with small victories and sometimes large ones. The roller coaster keeps going around…We just have to wait for it to pick up steam again and not give up. We need to be patient with ourselves and don’t put too much pressure on ourselves or our bodies.

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Thinkstock Image By: GOLFX