Souvenirs from My Cancer Adventure: Pain
Pain. Unremitting. Unrelenting. Pain. This is one of the souvenirs of my cancer ‘Adventure’.
I have not been out of pain since February 2016 and have come to accept I will never be pain free again. Learning how to manage the pain and how to navigate daily life in pain has been an extra ‘Adventure’.
Asking for help with pain and managing pain can be a full-time job, but there are solutions. And don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. When I asked one of my doctors about pain management his answer was “you’re super active, you need to back off your activity level”.
What? NO!
First, I’m not running marathons or anything even close to that. Next, I didn’t go through the agony of the Adventure to spend the rest of my life on the couch. If that’s your vision for me, what was point of the treatment? For me the point was to LIVE and sitting on the couch for the rest of my life is existing, not living. And there is a huge difference between the two.
So, I had to work to find my own solutions. I was able to discover there was a pain clinic associated with my other treatment center, and lo, and behold, there were other options.
For me, it takes a cocktail (no pun intended!) of medications, medical marijuana, physical therapy, massage therapy, supplements, and general awareness of life. But some days, despite all efforts, it also takes an attitude of ‘just get on with it.” I’ve gotten good at hiding the pain, until it hits about a five, on a scale of 1-10. After that I can’t hide it as well, but I can, mostly, get on with life.
None of it is perfect and none of it will solve everything, but at least I’m living. And that’s the point.
If you are in pain, say so, and if you don’t get answers that work for you, keep looking.
Some of the many articles on pain management for cancer survivorship:
Survivorship Pain– Center for Disease Control (CDC) - https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2020/19_0367.htm
Chronic Pain for Survivors -American Cancer Society - https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/one-in-3-cancer-survivors-has-chronic-pain.html
Medical Marijuana -Harvard - https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/medical-marijuana-2018011513085
Onward!
