Back pain

But first some comic relief:


As you might have noticed I have mentioned a few times that my back hurts, a lot, often, basically most of the time (on a scale of 1-10 of pain, on a good day its about a 3 - see here I'm going for the sympathy vote here - or you can call it whining because I am very good at that these days). I have anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, and pain meds. But there are still nights where I don't sleep much which leads to crabbiness and other side effects.

But being an experienced patient, I also went to the internet and found all sorts of 'medical cures' for back pain. Many of which I have tried including exercises, exercising, anti inflammatories, and physical therapy. As well as the usual assortment of snake oil salesmen that inhabit the internet. 'Buy our $50 video and you will learn how you can cure back pain through deep breathing.' I know better than to believe what I read on the internet (unless its on Facebook and then it MUST be true).

My next stop was the library where I found a book called 'Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief: How to manage, reduce and control chronic pain'. Unfortunately I haven't learned much that is new. 'Four out of five Americans will have at least one bout of back pain during their lifetime... In fact, back pain is one of the most common reasons for health care visits and missed work.' It also talks about chronic pain cycles, behavioral and emotional. Then it talks about the costs of chronic pain - physical deconditioning, loss of sleep, emotional upheaval, etc. However, it does explain some of my prescriptions that I didn't really understand how they work and it includes locks of icky pictures of really big needles going into someone's spine. There's even information on alternative medicines and therapies including chiropractic - which apparently is best for low back pain that has been present for less than four weeks - which is clearly not the case for me at all. (I have pain from my neck down and it has been around for nearly six months.)

But again, no silver bullet here for pain relief. But there are a lot of ideas about managing chronic pain which I will definitely have to read more on (and perhaps actually renew the library book so I can continue to read it but with chemo brain I keep forgetting to read it - maybe I need to finish my chemo brain book before I move onto my back pain book).

Needless to say, I used to get to whine about cancer but now I have moved on to back pain? Is this progress? I'll have to figure that one out.

In the meantime today I am going to the local garden club's plant sale and then doing work from home. I might squeak in a manicure as well. But otherwise I get to hang out with the cat. Starting next week I'll be way too busy to hang out with the cat so I have to make the most of it this week.