I would like to know how other people react to pain, or if I am unusual?
When I'm having a flare, I first feel like I'm getting the flu in my body; I start to ache bone deep, I feel dizzy and out of it, I get really tired. Then specific pain starts, which I can handle. Sometimes though, the pain becomes not just in specific body areas, or only in joints, but seemingly coming from my entire body in waves.
Eventually, if the pain is severe, I got to the point where I throw up from the pain, and sometimes get chills / chattering teeth / shivering.
Now, I have pain meds and a million other non-medical ways to manage my pain. I'm not asking for help with it. I was just thinking last night about my pain. The only time I've thrown up from pain otherwise was a natural childbirth, and when I had an exploded bleeding ovarian cyst.
This seems to tell me that my pain can be pretty shocking to my brain / body. It seems odd that I can have pain this severe with a chronic illness, that in another situation would land me in the hospital with a morphine drip.
Done rambling. I'd like to know if other people have experienced pain like this, and if you see the discrepency between PsA pain and other pain this severe.
Pain is so subjective. I hav e been living with some degree of chronic pain since 12 years of age. As time moved on I acquired more pain in more areas of my body for different reasons and now have PsA. I'm in my late 60's.
My wife used to make comments about how painful childbirth is (as do many women) but weh nshe had a kidney stone she decided that pain was at least equal to if not more severe than childbirfth. So pain is also relative to your experince of pain and how you have felt and how stressed you have been at any given moment. Pain issues are a very slippery-foggy thing.
Pain in places other than joints would confuse me and make me consider if I was imagining things or unconsciously trying to create sympathy. Over years I eventually come to trust my experience of pain as valid. I also ran across some information from Arthritis Foundation in past year that the medical profession is now more able to consider of something called "centralized pain" which is the nervous system becoming the repository of, and source of pain and not just the original location in a joint. And then when I researched PsA I see issues with ligiments and tendens - so there too the pain is not just in the joint. Sometimes we just have to shake loose from a preconceived idea. Meditation can help do that among anything else others find useful.
I think there is something so much more debilitating about a chronic illness and the pain that you just know will be a back another time, never really let up or be around for who knows how long. Childbirth? I knew that would come to an end and have an amazing reward. What is the reward for this suffering?
I have experienced natural childbirth times 3, a couple of ruptured ovarian cysts, and post operative pain. I think the big difference, like organic ketchup said, is that I knew that pain would end. It was relatively short term. When I look back on those things, they are little more than “blips on the radar”, no big deal.
My first flare is imprinted in my mind as second worst thing that has ever happened to me. The first worst is my second flare!
It is funny that when my pain from this is at its worst, for a normal person, they would be in the hospital with nurses running around trying to give them some good drugs!
Of course, Marietta, my pain starts differently than yours. I normally notice little nodules on my PIP and DIP joints that are very tender, which can go one for a few weeks before the swelling starts in my hands. Then the bottoms of my feet swell, and it eventually gets to my toes, ankles and lower legs. With the swelling comes localized pain only where the swelling is. Finally, I get deep pain in my femurs. When the upper legs start to hurt is when I loose it. I can’t get comfortable at all unless I am in the jet tub. Then the rest, wrists, knees, lumbar and neck pain follows all of that.
I think that anyone with a chronic condition that causes pain is in the same boat as we are, but because ours is a chronic problem, we are managed, for the most part, at home. Which is a good thing since a lot of us are immunocompromised!
Okay, I kind of rambled on, and I’m not sure I made my point. Maybe I should delay replying until my brain is fully awake!
I'm with you on the flu-like symptoms, including the fever, chills, dizziness, and sometimes headache too, but the pain level is more tolerable in my case. Having flu-like symptoms may lower your tolerance for pain though and maybe that's what is happening to you. I used to take Tramadol around the clock, but noticed I built up a tolerance quickly so I got off of it. Narcotics cause a rebound sort of pain, so I avoid them like the plague. I save the Tramadol for limited use. Sorry you have having a rough time with the pain. I hope you find something to help. Others with this kind of pain, also have fibromyalgia too. There are different meds for that, and I do not believe they are narcotics. Check with your dr.