Weather, Chronic Pain, Pain Pain and MORE PAIN!

Any and everyone of us here, there and yonder, knows how much the "weather" can effect chronic pain. Other illnesses such as Lupus, RA, Osteoarthritis, Joint replacements, cervical spine surgeries and problems, and many more illnesses are "effected" by weather.

Oddly enough, it was not that many years ago, that I would tell my doctor(s), not that long ago, ONE doctor saw you for just about everything.... that THE WEATHER MADE MY MIGRAINES WORSE! Back then, and as I said NOT that long ago, they would look at me like I was nuts, bonkers, and just needed some reason to "complain", go the the Emergency room for the dreaded Migraines that plagued me from the time I was about 17 years old, until I then began having "Lupus Migraines" about 10 years ago.

Lupus Migraines, as I call them are an entire different "ball game" from regular Migraines. Used to pain medication worked for the other migraines. Even though I had to fight tooth and nail to get it often times, my severe headache, nausea, the grogginess, the feeling of wishing you could remove your head from your body was horrid. Yet pain medications handled the problem, most of the time.

Then when I began having Lupus Migraines, no amount of "regular pain medications" in the world will do a thing for them. I must have a huge injection of corticosteroid, and then 10 to 14 days of Prednisone, the "step down" dose, in order to get rid of that type of Migraine.

Fortunately, getting that help is easier than having to go in for any type of narcotic pain medication. Yet, I still have to have those also, for the other "many chronic daily pains"I dread, must still have my pain pump, and I have pills for "break through" pains, especially during the times when the weather acts nuts, causing it to reek havoc with my entire body. I "had the surgeries" to help rid me of the other pain, from the joints that have just disintegrated over the years. I tried to tell doctors way back in my twenties, that I had "genetic arthritis". Again, although not that many years ago, they just didn't want to accept the fact that "someone as young as I was" could have that bad of joints. Yet, it was true. I tore cartilage out of my knee at 15. But, by the time I was 21 it needed surgery again. Then the other knee, my elbows, my shoulders, all began giving me problems. I had them injected more times than I can count.

After the many, many tests, scans, injections, medications, even was hospitalized for a few days to try a medication that was "dangerous" to my heart, and it didn't do one thing for the headaches.

After having several more joint surgeries by the time I was 35, I began getting through to some doctors, that these problems were not all imaginary, but were truly issues that I probably was born with. I even had double hernia surgery about 4 years ago! The surgeon told me I was probably "born" with those areas "weak" like some infant girls are, and after years of walking, lifting, bending, picking up something heavy and so on, that they finally became fully herniated, and had to be repaired. Even that was a nightmare. I could Feel them, I could SEE them, yet 3 doctors and even a sonogram didn't pick them up. I finally went to a surgeon I trusted and HE could feel and see them. HE knew what to look for, and he also was well aware of some women, were born with those spots weakened. And some went on to develop hernia's that needed repair.

Usually you don't catch me "lying around" or doing basically nothing. I fully believe that laying around, even when you feel like "hammered hell" can just cause you to feel worse, hurt worse, and give you a lack of energy, lack of muscles, an you question, which is better? Am I harming myself worse, by getting up and doing  things? Or am I better off "working through the stiffness, pain, swelling, and all of the side effects that go along with these illnesses?   

What sucks is that although I usually DO feel better up and moving, even if it is slowly, it still at times takes all the energy and will power I can muster these days.  I have people who stare at me when I park in the handicapped place. It's still hard to have "invisible illnesses". As much as is out there about so many of us suffering, with these horrid diseases, yet there are still "uneducated", "mean", selfish people that want to make fun of, or cause us more grief that we already deal with on any given day. Just sitting here trying to type had caused my wrists, my upper back, my hips, all to hurt like hell.

So, me now trying to sit down and write a 3rd book, when I need to spend HOURS typing it out, almost seems as if it will never happen.