Better day today. I was still feeling those pain echoes this morning. That shit stays with you for a long time. I would need 3 months of sub-5/10 before that went away. Coming off 10/10 days, it doesn’t just disappear. It doesn’t even just drop from a 10 to a 9. It eases it’s way down over several days. Yesterday was a transition day. Today is a recovery day. Is there a progress day? Usually not.
Just went for a walk. Didn’t have to force this one. My legs were a bit numb again. I had an ice pack on my back too. I didn’t feel much pain during the walk, but I noticed on my way back home that I was grimacing and gritting my teeth. Even though these areas were numb, my brain was still experiencing the pain. Kind of like how the brain can still feel pain during a surgery under anesthesia. They still need to give pain medications, even though you’re knocked out and aren’t aware. Your brain still is. My brain is still aware of the pain, even though it has been numbed. So pain medications and ice packs really only affect the active part of your brain. The automatic response/involuntary parts are unaffected. They still feel all the pain. This is the root of the pain management problem. This is the part doctors do not understand. If doctors and researchers could understand this, then the pain could be treated at this lower level within the brain. Even though one might be high as a kite on opioids and they don’t care about the pain one bit, the brain still feels it, and the damage is still being done. (I am not the person in this example). Some sort of dissociative drug might help this. This explains why ketamine therapy was helpful for my pain. The relief lasted up to a week. That’s because it truly relieves the brain of the burden of always experiencing pain. That involuntary part of the brain finally gets a break.
I haven’t been able to do much today. Just recovering. These are often wasted days. This is one reason they are not ‘good’ days. Just ‘decent’. I’ll take it over a flare up. That’s another reason they are only decent. I know the next flare up is right around the corner. Probably only 1 or 2 days away. It always keeps me on edge. I can never relax. I don’t want to start something I can’t finish. Or something that will wear me out and risk bringing on the flare up early. It absolutely sucks. It’s a really fucked up form of PTSD.
I can’t go 3 minutes without an ice pack. Every time I take off the ice pack, it feels like a dentist drill in my spine. It drives me absolutely nuts. Even with low fibro, the spine pain is always there. Nothing stops it.