11:46am August 2, 2015

Being in pain is a lot of work

I hate that no one really talks about how exhausting it is to be in pain.

Why is this never really discussed? I would think it’s obvious. Your body exerts a lot of energy to be in pain; muscles tense and cramp (seriously, flex your arm as hard as you can, now hold it like that for an entire day without ever relaxing it even once, you think that’s not going to make you tired?), nerves spend all day sending signals that make it feel like all your joints are full of static electricity, constantly measuring your breathing and movement to try not to make the pain worse takes effort and concentration (which is not a zero-calorie affair, your brain burns more calories to actively concentrate on things), those involuntary twitches whenever the pain spikes aren’t cost-free either and a lot of little movements add up, trying to hold a specific posture so that the pain isn’t quite as bad is a lot of work, and on and on and on.

Now imagine that being every single day of your life and try to tell me I can’t be tired because “all pain does is hurt.”

Being in pain really, really is completely exhausting.

One thing I tell people who don’t get it: I have trigeminal neuralgia. I know people who use wheelchairs because of trigeminal neuralgia. Trigeminal neuralgia is facial pain that does not affect your legs directly. But it can hurt so bad that some people can’t walk straight or balance and they fall over and need a cane or crutches or a walker or a wheelchair.

When my TN pain was at its worst, I felt like I was running laps all day long. Like by the end of the day I would be so exhausted that my body felt like I’d had the crap beat out of it and then I’d taken up really intensive jogging or something. And remember, this is facial pain that exists in just one nerve in your face. But it affects your whole body. And yes, it’s absolutely exhausting in a way that very little else can be. I know my adrenal insufficiency probably makes the exhaustion of pain even worse than usual, but even without AI pain is plenty exhausting.

And you’re right, nobody talks about it.

Just like they don’t talk about the really weird-ass dissociative effects you get when your pain climbs to around 8 on the pain scale. Such that you can be lying there unable to move and moaning and then asking “Why is my body acting like it’s in unbearable pain when I can’t feel anything at all anymore?”

And they don’t talk about the way really severe pain fluctuates, like you go in and out of that dissociative state, it doesn’t stay the same all the time, and it’s very confusing to be in the middle of.

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