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Not All Wounds Are Visible: Living with Chronic Pain

Casie Johnston, LPCC
Clinician

Unfortunately, I am able to write this blog due to personal experiences with chronic pain. In January of 2013, I had just moved to California. I was doing laundry and grabbed a laundry basket and something set off extreme pain inside my right leg. I was alone so I crawled up to bed and stayed there until the morning. I drove myself to a doctor and they sent me to the ER. Long story short, after multiple tests and two exploratory surgeries, I was in that hospital for nine days until they told me to go home and see a psychiatrist because I was mentally ill and was not actually experiencing pain. I tried to fly back home to Ohio with my mom and I was in too much pain. We attempted to try a different hospital. This hospital wouldn’t admit me due to seeing the records from the first, making them believe I was mentally ill and needed to see a psychiatrist. Luckily, an anesthesiologist decided to take on my case, it was a miracle! He performed a triple nerve block and I had a catheter in my nerve connected to a medicine pump that was slowly going into my nerves. This allowed me to fly home.

The anesthesiologist informed me I had to get a second medicine pump when the first became empty. Unfortunately, the Youngstown, Ohio area did not have these pumps and I was instead injected with an entire full dose of a different, but similar, medication. However, this led to additional pain that spread down my entire leg. This caused me to have to wear Lidocaine patches on the inside of my knee when I wear pants. In addition to this, you will not see me in high heels or jeans. So, I gained that new pain and I still had the original pain, however, with the initial pain, I couldn’t even walk. After the nerve block wore off, the pain was lessened but still there anyway. I know what you’re thinking, Why am I telling this story? Because new chronic pain can also come with added stress, grief of your old life, and feelings of “now what!?”

Stress
I will never forget the day I was told I would live with this forever. I was 22 years old. I didn’t graduate college. I didn’t become a wife or a mom. I wanted to have a future and I felt like I was thrown a huge curve ball in my life. The added stress of everything caused me to definitely go into a depression. I was in pain, which alone isn’t fun, but then I was told it wasn’t going away. I grieved a lot this day. I had to learn how to live an entirely new and different way of life. I was now an owner of a handicap pass, at age 22. This was a hard concept to accept.

Grieving Your Old Life
Do you have family members that take part in marathons or other types of runs? Forget that. Hiking? Extensive traveling? Forget it all. Driving to Cleveland then walking to the stadium and up and down the stadium, was out of the question! I was devastated. How can you grieve someone that still exists? How can I grieve someone that is me?!

At 22, I was grieving myself. I was grieving who I was before I had pain. I was grieving the life I could no longer live. So, now what do I do?!

Now What?
It took many years to be able to come to accept some of these things. I have accepted not being able to run a marathon at 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. But I refused to accept that I can’t go camping and on a little hike because it causes too much pain. I learned I had to live with the pain so there are certain things that I will do once and force myself to deal with the extra pain when it hurts more. Like when I sit for too long, or drive for too long. However, next year I planned a trip to Ireland! So I have to push through a very long flight, and travel the country for a week, however, I get to travel the part of the world where my family’s ancestors are from and explore the beauty the country of Ireland brings! I have to take what I can get now. I accept the fact that I can’t ride a bike around the entire country of Iceland, like certain people want to do, but I can figure out how to travel without cycling! I had to learn how to live with this pain and how to continue living with this pain forever. How can one do that? Below are some tips:

Support
An important thing to remember when living with chronic pain is to rely on support. Support and leaning on others is important in any mental health situation. When experiencing chronic pain, it isn’t something that goes away so stress can come up consistently. Chronic pain support groups can be beneficial as well so you don’t feel as alone.

Pain Management
It’s easy to accept the fact that you will live in pain forever and just learn how to emotionally manage this. However, it’s important to continue seeing pain management doctors to help with keeping the level of pain as low as possible and if there are any medical advances that could potentially help eliminate or lessen the pain.

Counseling/Coping
Making sure to handle all the large emotions that can come with chronic pain, is important. EMDR can help lessen your distress about the pain, however, since no one can take the actual pain away, learning to cope with it is significantly important. In counseling, your therapist and you will be able to come up with specific coping strategies that will help you. It’s important not to cope with drugs or alcohol. This can negatively impact your mental health and physical health.

Listening To Your Body
Making sure you listen to your body and pain is important. If you are trying to push through things too much, it can negatively impact your mental health if you constantly make your pain worse. It is especially important to be honest with how you are feeling! Did the girls call and want you to come out dancing? Did the guys call to set a tee time for golf? Boundaries are extremely important when it comes to listening to your body. Rest is necessary when you live with chronic pain.

This change can be hard initially, but it doesn’t have to be hard forever. Today, I am a permanent owner of a handicap pass. I may have had to change a lot and learn to live an entirely different lifestyle, however, after 12 years, you would not have known any of this unless you ask (or read this blog). I have been able to hide it from others a lot, however, this means I have accepted my pain and cope with it in a healthy manner. I got into a mentality of “what’s the point of complaining about it? Nothing is going to change it anyway!” However, this comes from a positive mindset instead of a negative mindset. I initially buried my feelings of loss, sadness, anger, confusion, etc. Counseling helped me get into this mindset, and can help you too!