Tips for Understanding People with Chronic Pain

Excellent advice. Those of us with chronic pain need understanding and love!

Free Write: Pain

I often turn to writing when I’m upset. I don’t like using this blog as a platform for heralding my woes, so I try to keep the negative stuff in check. Tonight, though, I’m just going to write.

Tonight I am in pain. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to type this out because my arms and hands were hurting so badly a few minutes ago. I have an icky headache. I’m used to having headaches, always seem to have one in fact, but sometimes they are really bothersome. I’m nauseated for unknown reasons. I feel like someone beat me up and left me for dead. One of my favorite books, Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, features a state of living in which you the characters become un-dead, for lack of a better phrase. One morning they wake up, only to discover that their hair has fallen out and their skin is blotchy and sick looking. While in this state, any damage done to their bodies remains, unhealed, indefinitely. They feel the pain from every cut, bruise, or break – it never goes away, just drives them insane. I think Brandon Sanderson was describing fibromyalgia (he just didn’t realize it), because that’s how I feel so often.

Chronic Pain Harms the Brain

Chronic Pain Harms the Brain.

via Chronic Pain Harms the Brain.