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Chronic Chronicles (1)
Living with constant pain and fatigue
Chronic pain bites your ass. To put it bluntly. It grabs you by the seat of your pants, like a bulldog and locks it’s jaws in, shaking you within an inch of your life, leaving you bleeding and exhausted on the floor, with that tenacious maw still attached to your delicate posterior. And why? You didn’t provoke that attack — you didn’t even leave feeding the beast too late, or take away it’s favourite toy — but it came at you nevertheless, slavering and growling out of the darkness like a thing possessed. And when you live with more than one condition which leaves you in a state of constant pain and constant fatigue, one of those padded suits they wear when training attack/guard dogs wouldn’t even help protect you.
Every morning, as soon as I wake, before I even move or open my eyes, I mentally run a scan of my entire body — every joint, every muscle, every inch of skin, cataloguing any aches, pains, discomfort and reaction to external stimuli. I add that last, because believe me, every small thing in my immediate environment can affect how I am feeling: the brush of a sheet against a particularly tender patch of skin; the weight of a cat lying across my hip (I would recommend to anyone that they try a weighted blanket, for both physical and mental/emotional issues…. or get a cat); a draft of air; the temperature of…
