It's been a little while since I featured a diary of a spoonie blog post and a lot has changed in my life so it's about time we talk about it. I've been dealing with the injury to my hand, a major jump in my pain, being referred for an surgical review and my mental health plummeting as a result, there's been so much change going on.
Over the past couple of months, the pain in my injured hand seems to have jumped up and alongside my chronic pain, it's become unbearable and it's become difficult to manage it on a day to day basis. Its now starting to affect my sleep, my mood and my mental health so when I finally went back to my physio at the end of January and we weren't in the place that we'd both hoped that I'd be, I ugly cried to my physio (yes, you read that right!) out of pure frustration. She decided that it's time to speak to orthopaedic surgeons to have them see if they can untether whatever is stopping me moving as normal and what could be contributing to my pain. She did give me a very attractive looking glove to wear whilst in bed to help if it reduced the sensitivity of the nerves in my hand so that I wasn't waking up in pain as often, she did also convince me to go back and see my GP about altering my painkillers to something more effective.
Unfortunately with me I can't take even the lowest level anti-inflammatories without them setting off my asthma and I don't want to be taking really strong painkillers like Tramadol, especially not in my 30's. So we were left with retrying a medication that gave me a previous reaction to see if it helps/does the same thing again and trying a compression glove during the day while I wait to see the surgeons at the beginning of March.
As a result of everything that has happened over the last year, my mental health has completely plummeted and I finally hit my rock bottom. For someone that is as fiercely independent as myself, admitting that I need help and talking to someone was so hard for me. Having a phone call about my mental health, it finally all came to a head and after almost an hour I was diagnosed with anxiety, low mood and depression with it mostly centring around work and my injury. From the conversation that we had they want to try 'Help Yourself' therapy first where they give you the tools and work to do to actually help yourself (get it?!).
Living with chronic pain and illnesses, you learn to mask what's going on internally on a day to day basis otherwise you constantly get comments on how tired/awful you look. But these past few months it has been really hard to keep that mask up on a day to day basis and I finish work feeling exhausted with no motivation to do anything or move and I'm left feeling in a daze and hours are just passing by. At the moment I'm working closely with my medical team and actually being open to support from close friends (I'm use to being the one that helps everyone else) as well as trying not to push myself to far too fast while learning to cope on a day to day basis.
How's your life been the past few months?
Speak to you next time!
