They are both opioids or narcotic drugs and both can be addicting. Tramadol is a synthetic derivation of codeine.

I have “suffered” from migraine disease since I was five years old (at least that’s my earliest recollection).  My childhood headaches were reasonably predictable.  If I didn’t get enough sleep, or I got overly excited (read: stressed), I would get a raging headache, throw up, then sleep a couple of hours, and the pain would be gone.  I probably had a headache once every week or so.  Sometimes I’d go longer.

As I got older, they became more problematic.  When I student taught, I had a few, one of which had me on the couch in the teacher’s lounge trying to sleep it off.  A snarky P.E. teacher told me I’d never be able to teach if I couldn’t handle a headache.  He was wrong, but sometimes it does affect my ability to teach effectively, and I use all my sick days (which are generous) every year because of them.

When I began the phase of my life in which I was often pregnant or nursing a baby, I did not get any headaches.  It was such a blessed relief to go a year at a time without the debilitating pain.  For several years, my headaches were limited to two or three a year, although I noticed they were lasting seven or eight hours.  But a few times a year – doable.

Then I had a hysterectomy about ten years ago.  All hell broke loose!  Since that time, I have had headaches more often than not.  Over the past couple years, my migraine has become daily, so I get to say I have “chronic daily migraine” now.  Lucky me.

Migraine is hereditary in my family, so I can’t fix that.  I wear sunglasses almost always when I’m outside, and avoid being in the heat whenever possible.  I no longer go to loud, crowded places or anywhere there might be cigarette smoke.  I have tried diet changes, which help significantly, but are very difficult to maintain.  I do better some weeks than others.  I have tried every over-the-counter pain reliever.  Advil works sometimes.  That’s about it.  I got myself a neurologist, who I pretty much fired after months of  ”Try this.  Try that.  Huh, those should have worked.”  He never once spoke to me about lifestyle changes, research, diet, or anything else besides medications.  He had me on so much Topamax I got forgetful and was having trouble speaking and acting intelligently.  My own doctor dialed it back, but after several years on this med, I decided it wasn’t really helping since I was in pain daily anyway.  I have tried vitamins and herbs.  I still use Imitrex, which works most of the time.  The problem is, within 12 to 24 hours, my pain is back, and the mental fogginess and the snaps, crackles, and pops in my neck, along with the tightness in my neck and shoulders never goes away, even when the pain subsides.

I was raised in a family in which it was not okay to whine and complain, which is good, but I never feel comfortable talking about being in constant pain.  Even as a blogger, I have resisted more than mentioning that my head hurts.  That barely begins to cover it.

This weekend I was perusing one of my favorite blogs, PastaQueen.com.  I started reading it because its writer, Jeanette Fulda, lost half her body weight over the course of a couple of years.  I have been so impressed with her!  Three years ago, however, she got a headache and it never went away.  When I read her archived posts, I was struck by how similar our lives have been over the past several years, although she lost the weight…  ahem.

Anyway, she wrote an eloquent post on what it’s like to live with chronic pain.  She put into words what I have wished to express to those in my life.  If you are in constant pain, or care about someone who is, please read her post.  I’d also like to add that her new book, Chocolate and Vicodin, hit the bookstores this week!  I can’t wait to read it, and I’ll let you know what I think.  I’m expecting it to be funny, insightful, and just plain good.

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

A friend shared this link with me and it really hit home for me. So I had to share this with people.

Honestly, I was shocked that someone actually read my blog! So thank you for sharing this with me. It really meant something because I haven’t thought about it but the story really does explain how you have to think about things during the day.

So let’s see – it’s 1:44 am as I start to write this blog post. I’m totally supposed to be asleep right now, but I’m not. I am tired, but my mind seems to have ideas other than sleeping. I know I’ll be regretting this in the morning! But for now here I am. I’ve been thinking lately about labels. Not labels like designer labels, or sticky things we make with label machines, but those words we attach to ourselves…

I’ve always, always hated those times when I’m in a group setting with a lot of people I don’t know that well. Inevitably we have to go around the room and say who we are, what we do, and why we’re there. Ugh, this sort of things fills me with dread. What label do I want to attach to myself? Do I tell people I’m a wife, mother (double label, because I’m not just a mother, I’m a stay-at-home-mother), daughter, sister, friend, BRCA mutant, writer (well, aspiring anyway!), an untrained books-in-the-work-sort of-editor, a blogger, a deep thinker, a Fibromaylgia sufferer, a helper of people? I am all of these things, and more, but which label do I want people to think of when they think of me? Better question…

What do I want to think of, when I think of me? What do you think of, when you think of you? Do we pick and choose our labels and define ourselves based on the situation at hand, on where we are, and what company we’re in? I guess so, sort of…maybe even mostly.

To be honest (as I usually am!), most of the time I think of myself as a chronic pain sufferer. That sucks. I think about my constant pain more than I think about BRCA mutations or much of anything else really. It’s hard to take my mind off of pain, especially when it’s unrelenting. I’m sure most people who know me on Facebook or read my blog would guess that I think about BRCA stuff more than anything else, and while yes, that does occupy a lot of my time and thought, I feel on top of my BRCA situation (well, mostly, except for when I don’t!). Most of my BRCA time is spent trying to help others, and not so much worrying about it (anymore anyway!). The cool thing about being BRCA positive is that I was able to take control of that – do something about that damnably high cancer risk. Not that having body parts removed was easy AT ALL, but once done, it’s done (except of course for dealing with complications and do-overs and revision surgeries!). There’s a coming to terms period, a surgery and recovery period, and for me, there was a grieving, angry, emotional mess and total basket case period (this does still present itself on occasion!). There was also a healing period – and since I’m still extremely not normal looking under my shirt, I’ll have to go through many of those periods again when I have my next and hopefully last surgery!

As far as living with the pain of Fibromaylgia goes, I haven’t had a healing period yet. I’ve had hopeful times, but mostly I’ve had sad, angry, frustrated, frightened, despondent and sometimes flat out depressed times. Hope comes when I try something new to help myself (biofeedback, chiropractic, a pain management clinic, yoga, stretching, acupuncture, glyconutrients, whey/dairy-free diet, massage, meditation, medication, hot baths, hot packs, cold packs, herbal supplements, trigger point injections, etc etc ad naseum – I could go on, but – boring!) – sometimes these things even work for very brief periods…maybe the power of suggestion? But they never last for long. It’s hard to keep hope when dealing with muscle spasms and various body parts that often seem to be literally screaming at me: “I hate you, Teri, suffer, suffer, suffer!” It’s hard to not give in on an emotional level, which I try very, very hard not to do – stress makes the pain worse! Acceptance is key – I can do it for short spurts of time, but not forever, not always.

Research shows that the root cause of Fibromaylgia may be (may be, because they don’t know for sure!) emotional trauma, or living in a very high-stressed out mode for a period of time. Yep, that fits me. I can buy that. So I think…well, if negativity from my past created the pain of my present, then what if I just change how I am now to release the pain. Makes sense, but so far, it hasn’t worked. Maybe I can’t logically bargain my way out of this problem.

I wonder if it’s because my root thought is this label that’s stuck in my subconscious (ok, and conscious!) mind – the label that I am a chronic pain sufferer. Or maybe a cigar is just a cigar. The bad thing about being a deep thinker is I try to figure out the reasons for everything and sometimes it keeps me up at night. I keep blaming this pain on myself. Mostly because past patterns have shown me that placing blame on anything outside of myself limits my ability to do anything about it. You can’t blame other people, or things for something if you have any hope of making a lasting change, I’ve learned this the hard way. But I don’t know, maybe that won’t work for this situation, or maybe I’m just doing it wrong. It’s been five years of this after all, and that’s a really long time to be trying to figure something out!

I guess I’m blathering on and on, but the point is, or was when I started writing this anyway, is… who are we when we strip away our labels? What’s left? Nothing? Energy? Bones, guts and cells? I mean, really, what is there, outside of those labels? I just thought of my oldest brother who went to a retreat many years ago. Lots of people stood up to tell their truth and make their “I am” statements… when it was his turn, filled with the emotional and spiritual feelings of a week full of positive thinking and loving people, he was overwhelmed (in a good way) and declared proudly and happily “I am….love.” It gives me goosebumps to think about. I wonder if enough self-love could cure chronic pain? I can’t help but believe that it could, but so far, all of my belief in the power of my own mind to create my reality hasn’t made this particular problem go away. Again I wonder if my root thought…my deeply stitched on personal label, is preventing me to be free. Or maybe this is just the way it’s got to be for me.

Do you have a label that’s keeping you rooted in pain, emotional or physical? Have you ever managed to move past something like that, to truly and forever shed a painful affliction? If so, how? What was your secret?

Today your inconsistent writer would like to express to all the world how much it hurts to be rejected, and worse, ignored. I put my heart and soul into my art. It’s as if nobody cares. At one point it seemed as though my photography blog was going to break out of obscurity, but those hopes are sinking yet again. I’ve been rejected by a juried show yet again. Both of these really hurt and piss me off at the same time. Why should I care if nobody else does?

Then there is the physical pain that I endure every day. Yesterday it rained all day. I couldn’t sleep a wink last night. I even did something I NEVER do. I took an extra pain pill. GASP! It didn’t help much. I am guessing that I got three hours and thirty minutes of sleep last night. All of this adds up to a crushing depression that is hard for me to endure.

It’s difficult for me to give up. I want to quit trying. Believe me. I really want to stop. If I do stop trying to make a difference in this shitty world, what’s left? Brooding thoughts, darker than a crow feather, fester in my mind and heart. No, I would never take my own life under any circumstances. Well, only under the most extreme circumstances could induce me to take such a step, but allow me the right to wish to die. Why do people suffer so? Life is a series of misfortunes that end in death. At least for me it seems that way.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar II, which means I have long periods of sadness that are punctuated with brief moments of happiness, not joy, but mere happiness which is fleeting and of no moment. Joy? How often have I felt that profound feeling? I don’t know if I ever have. The same goes for romantic love. That seems to have eluded my life as well. I curse my fate!

Noah curses Ham ©Unknown

Delusional thought and fear create people without heads.  Doubt clouds self-image.  Mental and physical pain cross the threshold of consciousness and life changes drastically.

How do we cope, manage or thrive?   Thoughts can be very enticing.  Resisting the judgmental thoughts helps to stay present and protect us.  We lose our connection with the present moment when we engage the delusion.

What helps heal it?

Attention directed inward will help.  Small moments. Experiencing the present moment is what it’s all about.

Almost year ago, I published a list of 84 ways TBI can make your life really interesting, which is a list of 84 different issues that can arise as a result of a traumatic brain injury. I pulled together the list from a number of different reputable sources — books, websites, papers — and sorted them by type, from behavioral to communication to mental to emotional, etc.

The list itself actually dates back to about 2008, when I put together a list of all the issues I’d been having that I needed to manage. I’ve been using this list for several years, now, to monitor and track the things that make my life more challenging, and it’s really helped a lot — sometimes, mainly because it just reminds me that I have these issues and I need to be mindful of them.

It’s tough to manage things that you can’t see, after all…

But with things in plain view, I was able to manage. At first, it was tough, but eventually I learned. It took a lot of work and a willingness to be honest about what was going on with me — like any self-improvement work, I suppose. Except in my case, instead of it being “all in my head/heart”, I had some underlying neurological issues that played into the whole picture.

In a way, having the underlying neurological issues was a relief. I had felt for the longest time (30+ years) like there was something wrong with ME, for how I behaved and the ways I handled the world around me. I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. Or I was being lazy. Or stupid. Or I was deliberately sabotaging myself. As it turns out, I was dealing with neurological issues which in and of themselves weren’t terribly severe, but which combined to exacerbate each other to the point where I was practically disabled in some ways.

I had plenty of talent and plenty of smarts, but contrary to all appearances, I couldn’t seem to get my act together. I had told myself for years that I was “choosing” to not employ my talents fully, when in fact I was constantly undermined by distractability, fatigue, anxiety, constant restlessness, agitation, chronic pain, and sensory sensitivities (to light and sound) that derailed me in times when I needed to be at my best. I was on a constant roller coaster of up and down emotions, taking two steps forward, two steps sidewards, two steps back, three steps forward, and getting all turned around in the process. Anxiety, not intention, determined my life’s direction, and I can tell you, I was going nowhere fast.

Even in those times when I was feeling like I was getting somewhere, I sometimes got hurt again, and then I had the setback of yet another tbi to deal with.

All the while, there I was, thinking there was something wrong with ME… I was a loser, I was a waste of space, I was a charter member of underachiever’s anonymous. And that sense was probably just as debilitating as any of my neurological/physical issues.

I wasn’t doing myself any favors by being so down on myself.

But when I started learning about TBI and started tracking my issues in light of my neurological situation and background, things started to really come together. I was also amazingly fortunate to connect with a neuropsychologist who believed (as I did) that the problems I had were “fixable” and they’ve been working with me to help me think differently about myself and my abilities, and see my whole life, not only my tbi’s, as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Once I quit blaming myself and being ashamed of my issues, a lot of my troubles started to clear.

But it wasn’t until I took a close look at what was going on with me and got honest about the havoc it was wreaking in my life, that I was able to DO anything about it.

I could have gone on indefinitely, telling myself — and the world — that “That’s just the way I am – you got a problem with that?!” Being constantly defensive about my limitations and difficulties and pulling out all the stops to justify them and defend my “right” to be a screw-up. It’s how I’d been living for close to 40 years, so why stop now?

Well, watching everything you hold dear go to shit, and realizing that you’ve got no foundation (financial, professional, interpersonal) to support your life has a way of forcing you to get honest. That’s why I stopped all the B.S. in my head. Plus, I was really tired of feeling like crap all the time, constantly wondering why nothing ever worked out the way I wanted/expected it to.

Anyway, I guess the bottom line is, you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken. And getting past the idea that it was ME that was broken, rather than how my brain was working, was an important part of restoring my daily and long-term functionality.

Speaking of functionality, I’ve got errands to run. Have a good day, everyone. Stay strong.

Patience is a spiritual practice.

Recently I wrote about patience as one of the gifts of illness. As difficult as it is to bear the pain, the discomfort, the distress and the deprivation, we grow through these kinds of experiences. I know, it is hard as hell sometimes. We want ease. We want rest. We want peace of mind. We are human, of course we do! And yet our plight is not without fruit. We stretch our patience muscle in ways we never thought possible. We learn about ourselves.

There have been times in my life in which I was not allowed to eat anything at all. The doctors in the hospital forbade me from eating food for weeks at a time because any food at all could have triggered my severely inflamed colon to burst. They decided to give me intravenous food, parenteral nutrition. But I had tiny little veins and the radiologists had a heck of a time getting the “main line” (or pic line) into my arm. I remember one time it took 8 attempts to get the line in. Each attempt was so painful, near unbearable, I wanted to give up. My upper arms were lined with black and blue marks. And yet I made it through that horrific procedure several times.

Then there were the baby food years. My intestines were so sensitive, even after my colon was surgically removed, that I ate only the blandest of foods: rice, pasta, eggs, baby food, tofu, and a little fish (I did not know at the time that I could not tolerate gluten and soy!) for years. Vegetables, beans, lentils — all of those foods were way too fibrous for my sensitive gut. So I ate baby food veggies, maybe one jar a day. There were a few months in which I juiced carrots and beets (and now I can’t tolerate carrots or beets). My physicians encouraged me to drink Ensure, which is a protein drink. I drank hundreds of cans of Ensure and held my nose while it went down. The smell of Ensure now makes me feel nauseous!

There were so many challenges to living with Crohn’s colitis. Sometimes I didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. Sometimes my bowel movements sounded like explosions in public bathrooms, while my colleagues were also taking care of business. I had to explain to friends and colleagues why I couldn’t eat so many foods. I had to ask for special foods. I struggled to get a good night’s sleep and worked full days after tossing and turning in pain throughout the night. There was a year in which I did not sleep through the night on any of the 365 nights. There were years in which I meandered between depression and anxiety. Was it easy? No! Did those experiences change me? Absolutely!

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