Awash in pain...

To be blunt, I have been awash in pain.  I do find it a bit odd that my best days, physically, in the past few months were when my parents were here for their visit.  Of course, I cooked and cleaned and laundered myself from deep fatigue into total exhaustion, but this is more.

We just had some sort of front blow through here that absolutely felled me.  There was a front last week I found difficult to endure, but this one was 1,000 times worse.  Since October, I have had days where it felt as if I am not taking my Celebrex.  I check and double check to make sure that I remembered to fill the daily medication boxes with it. I see that little yellow and white pill and think, Why do I hurt so badly?  I have wondered oft and on how it could be that my arthritis could be so much worse.  I am still conflicted about that.  Is it worse, or is it just the dysautonomia magnifcation factor?  You know, like I have such an exaggerated response when my blood sugar starts to drop rather than when it gets to a "normal" low level.

My hands are my nemesis, feeling swollen even though they do no look swollen to me at all.  Stiff and sore and difficult to bend.  My lower back is my arch enemy, the first spot of arthritis and my worst site.  My right hip hates me.  My knees mock me.

With the abdominal pain, I am felled by overwhelming waves of it and, eventually, it goes away.  By that I mean, even if I have it daily (wee hours of the morning-ly), I still have big swaths of the day that are not filled with writhing in my midsection.  And when I have a migraine, even though I doubt being able to survive it, it does end. The pain ends.  Nausea is not pain, but even in the throes of it, struggling to get to the next second, some part of me knows that it will end. The bout will be over.  I will be nausea free again, if only for a few hours.

The nerve pain is a different penny.  It oft lasts days on end.  So, for example, I've had my internal electric cattle prod poking my right thigh for the past few days.  Fun times.  I have been battling nerve pain every day, but in spates ... or at least in ways I can endure it, though, I think, perhaps, if you asked Becky, she would tell you that I have become more and more and more grumpy and quick to have my feelings hurt.  Poor Becky.

But, oh my, I have struggled mightily with the stiff, sore, achey bits of me. The never-ending stiff, sore, achey bits of me.  If you look up the word "achey," you will see it means continuous dull pain.  UGH.  Its that continuous part that gets me.  It does get worse and then less worse, but the pain never goes away.  I am sued to being stiff, sore, and achey when I've sat for too long or getting out of bed in the morning, but this is brutal.

I am awash in pain.
And losing perspective.

Tomorrow, I see the rheumatologist.  I honestly do not have much hope for pain relief, given the medication options I know about, but maybe ... just maybe ... there is a way.  SIGH.