Steroid Injection Countdown

After finally getting a pain management referral late last year I met my consultant who was amazing and completely understood everything I said, after being ignored and doubted so much over the year’s this was a huge relief!

Steroid Injection

Steroid Injections

The consultant decided steroid injections may help so I am booked in for 8th March for 3 steroid injections. I’m beginning to feel extremely nervous the closer the appointment gets if I am honest. I’ve decided to call the night before and request to be put to sleep. I had a huge needle phobia growing up but obviously us mum’s get jabbed quite a bit when we have babies so I quickly learnt not to fear the needle so much. However.. the thought of the size of these needles has put the fear back in me!

I am so afraid I will jump when the needles go in and cause problems by doing so. I would much rather be asleep so they can be done carefully and properly without me being a wimp and jumping all over the place. You’d think I’d be able to deal with the pain of a needle considering I am pretty much in pain 24/7. I guess it is a different type of pain which is why I don’t deal with it so well.

The other thing that worries me is that it isn’t just one injection, I’m booked in for three! I will be having a Lumbar epidural steroid injection and bilateral sacroiliac injections. After this my consultant will see how the injections affect me and go from there.

I’d love to hear from other spoonies/chronic pain sufferer’s about their experiences with steroid injections. If you have had these done please get in touch 🙂 If you have a post about them feel free to send me a link too!

Overcoming a bad patch

I’m pretty sure I am not alone in saying January was mostly awful!
I’ve been trying to overcome a bad patch. The cold weather made it miserable and made my whole body hurt so much I had to keep myself fairly dosed up, something I generally avoid doing as much as possible as I really don’t like taking any kind of medication and dealing with the side effects.

As you may have read my LGG4 died leaving me without a phone and almost camera-less.. I say almost because I do in fact own a real camera, I have a Fujifilm finepix S1500 but I misplaced the rechargeable batteries and hunted through the flat huffing and sulking for a good few days until I eventually found them.

Just as I thought I was winning I managed to take a few shots and went to put them on my laptop only I couldn’t find the USB lead! So of course I spent another few days tearing apart the flat like a madwoman.

The Mr  then suggested asking our tech geek if he had a spare. Turns out we went through all this when I got the camera (second hand) and tech geek had given me a memory card reader to use instead.

Of course this was sat in my kitchen junk draw staring at me for the entire week whilst I searched the draw for the batteries (which were actually in there too!?) and the non-existent USB lead.

Normally it wouldn’t bother me so much but I needed the pictures for our Weekend Box review and the Mr found a local photography group a few weeks back and I was hoping to brave it and try going to hopefully learn to take much better photo’s and to give me a break as well as meeting new people in the area.

I also started on the mission of cleaning my brother’s flat leaving me exhausted and well behind on my own housework. Obviously I don’t mind doing it as it really is needed and I am the only person he trusts to go through his stuff and sort it but I am suffering for it.

Both girl’s have been ill on and off throughout January too which obviously makes it even harder to get thing’s done or catch a moment to myself. Add to that the Issue’s we have been having with Eva’s school it has been a hectic, stressful and lonely month!

Overcoming a bad patch

So all in all January was a bit crap to be honest. I know to most people all these little things seem so silly but for me it just felt like one thing after another was going wrong and this caused my depression and anxiety to spiral out of control a little. Luckily February seems to be going fairly well minus a poorly Eva and issue[s with her school.

Reviewing the Weekend box really perked both Eva and myself up and gave us something to do whilst Izzy slept over the weekend.

I eventually managed to upload my pictures and finish the blog post too. I missed another photography group meet though as I have been overly anxious all week but I’m hoping to pluck up the courage to go on Tuesday.

As it turned out the LGG4 was still under warranty and although the collection was delayed by a day the G4 was collected for repair on Wednesday and should hopefully be back working within a week,
I have everything crossed it is fixable as I really do love that phone!

My brothers flat is so much cleaner and a lot more organised and his asthma has started to ease up slightly where there is less dust & mould. He is doing better in himself and on my last visit we went to ads with an unused gift card I found at his and bought him a decent saucepan, strainer and utensils and enough food to keep him going until my next visit.

Although I’ve been in a lot of pain lately we worked out wearing the Mr’s long johns helps with my leg pain where they stay warmer. Also the Mr has been making sure my wheat bags are warmed every night and he has been using a fan heater to warm the bed up each night to help too. Plus knowing I only have another month to wait until my steroid injections I am hopeful the pain may decrease a little!

To top it all the blog seems to be doing fairly ok even though I’ve struggled with posting and networking lately and I have a few more awesome reviews coming up very soon.

Over the coming month I’ll have more time to chat to other bloggers and read more posts too which I love doing! So if we haven’t spoken before please feel free to come say Hi sometime as I love discovering new blogs and having a chat.

Hopefully this coming Tuesday I will manage to make it to the Photography meet up, I just need to try not to think about it too much in the days leading up to it to keep my anxiety down. Easier said than done but I really need to try and do this for myself, give myself a bit of time out doing something I love & hopefully make some friends around here too!

Eva is booked in at the Dr’s Monday and I’m hoping we can get to the bottom of her headaches and a few other thing’s.

February is definitely looking to be a much better month already! How was your January? Do you have high hopes for February?

10 Things I’m Looking Forward To In 2016

10 Things I'm Looking Forward To In 2016

10 Things I’m Looking Forward To In 2016.. A whole new year to look forward to! I usually don’t have too much to look forward to as we enter each new year however so far 2016 seems to have a few things in store for us which I can not wait for. So here are My 10 things I’m looking forward to this year.

  1. Steroid injections in March I know it’s strange to look forward to a procedure like this but especially as the pain is creeping back again I’m hopeful they will help ease even a tiny bit of the pain to allow me to continue strengthening my core.
  2. The Easter holidays – Although we don’t particularly celebrate Easter as we aren’t religious in any way we do love to scoff a few choccy eggs! (Don’t we all!?) The holiday itself is a nice break for us and a chance to do things as a family. Things are looking slightly better financially so we are hoping to fit in a trip to London during the Easter hol’s to visit the science museum and anywhere else that takes the girl’s fancy. We haven’t had a chance to get out and do much with the girls & I intend on changing that this year!
  3. Eva’s 6th Birthday (10th May) – The last few years the majority of people have let Eva down on her birthday so last year we decided against a party. This year however I’ve decided we are going to do something different & take her & her friend out for the day to the zoo. If we have our own car by then it will probably be Colchester zoo otherwise we can all take the train & visit London zoo instead! ( 😀 I Love it when I have a back up plan!)
  4. The summer holidays (June-Sept) – Who doesn’t love it when the sun is shine and that alone is a perfect excuse to go out & enjoy it. I hurt so much when it’s cold it makes it hard for me to feel motivated enough to take the girls out much but in the summer I always make up for it.
  5. August – It’s part of the summer holidays but I love it for other reasons too! My brother turns 21 on the 5th, Izzy turns 2 on the 6th, and I turn 20… (6 D: ) on the 14th. It’s a big one for my brother this year and I fully intend on making sure he damn well enjoys it!
  6. Spending more time with my brother – In the last 2 weeks we have seen him 4 times, usually we see him maybe once every 2-3 months as he hides away when he is struggling but he seems to be realising now he can come to us no matter what & we will help in any way we can even if he just needs to be around people and chat nonsense 🙂
  7. Figuring out how to make pretty knitted & crocheted items – I’ve been knitting a few years now but never had the confidence to do anything other than a plain knitted blanket or scarf, this year I want to focus on my knitting a bit more & learn to crochet properly. (If you have any tutorials/patterns etc please Get in touch :D)
  8. Growing the blog – Getting back into blogging again has already helped me loads & it makes me really happy to see my followers growing and people actually reading my rambles. It makes me even happier when people like & comment too. I’m really enjoying blogging again & cant wait to see what progress I can make in 2016 & look forward to connecting with other bloggers too.
  9. Working with brands – I love product reviewing and testing all sorts of stuff from technology to food, toys to appliances, there’s very little I wouldn’t mind reviewing if I’m honest & after testing a Cake for Baker Day’s it’s reminded me just how much I loved doing this on my last blog.
  10. Learning to manage my pain – I am now under a pain management consultant who really seemed to listen on my first visit & has explained so much to me that although I still feel a little lost with it all after  we now have a plan in place to help me manage the pain and build my core strength back up. The plan so far is that I will see  my consultant every 8 weeks or so with steroid injections & physiotherapy alongside it and once I am able to manage the pain better I can work harder on building up my strength, in the meantime though I just need to keep active but not push myself so hard and actually rest when I need to.. easier said than done admittedly with 2 young children but I am at least trying to slow down!

So that’s my list (I love lists!) of 10 things I’m looking forward to this year, what are yours?

CatchMyPain App Review

I came across this amazing app called CatchMyPain thanks to a member from a facebook group I am on. It is available on both the Google Play Store and the Itunes store by searching ‘CatchMyPain’. The app allows anyone with Chronic pain to track and log their pain. It even lets you send it via email making it really easy to share with Dr’s etc!

Catch My Pain

When you use create a pain entry there are 7 pages to complete. On the first page you are presented with a picture of the body and 5 colours to use. Mild pain – Yellow going all the way up to Dark red – Unbearable.

Using these colours you can colour in the area’s which are painful. You can then use colour to specify how intense the pain is in that area. I love this as I find it hard to explain why I am in so much pain. This way I can show people where and how much it hurts so they can get a better idea.

image
Pain Intensity options

The body rotates allowing you to colour wherever on the body you need to and theres an eraser if you want to start again.

image

On the following page are you are given the option to edit the time frame of your entry. This means you can log exactly when the pain started and for how long it lasted.

I find this handy if you have a particularly bad day and don’t feel up to making an entry until you are feeling better. Allowing you to track your pain accurately as you can enter earlier dates and times too!

Pain Intensity

Next up is the overall ‘Pain Intensity’ which you are given a slider to move. The slider starts from No pain up to Worst pain imaginable.

On the fourth screen, you are given a list of ‘Descriptions’ you can select. These describe the types of pain and you can even add your own. Perfect if you can’t find the right description in the list. You can add as many as you like too which is ideal.

image

Condition

‘Condition’ is the 5th screen where you are asked how you felt during the time frame selected on the second screen. You do this by choosing a face to represent ‘Happiness’, from a crying sad face to a smiley face.

image

As I have found this app so useful I chose to add on the Stress and Fatigue sliders too for only £0.65! I don’t tend to pay for in-app add ons but this seems a great feature.

image

The sixth page is the weather here you can adjust time or date and sync it with your location. You can also enter it manually and it will log the temperature which you can adjust if needed.

Extras

As you can see on the sixth page there is also the option to buy the full weather feature for £1.96. I am currently earning Google Play Store credit using the Google Opinion Rewards app! (Thank me later haha!)

image

On the final screen you have the options to add in any comments you wish.

Pain Chart

Having filled out several Pain entries I visited the Pain Chart to see what it showed. I was impressed that it had literally logged everything including the percentage of the body affected by pain!

image

I like how it shows Happiness, Stress and Fatigue on here as it also gives people an idea of how the pain affects me. Using this chart I can also work out what actually helps me calm down and relax too. Blogging and Knitting are definitely helping me this week!

Medications

Another part of this app is ‘My Meds’ where it enables you to add any medications you take. You can edit the details of the drug as seen below and you can set the frequency they are taken too.

Again I decided to pay £1.14 so I could add on the Drug intake reminder as I am absolutely awful with remembering to take my tablets at the right time!

image

There is also a built-in community, so you can chat with others, when you do this you are asked to set up a username and your display picture becomes the body from your last pain entry showing where and how intense the pain was/is.

Having had a look around the Google Play Store for a similar app several times before I was really happy and impressed when I tried this one out.

What more could you want? It helps you track everything, its an easier way to show friends, family and Dr’s if like me you are very forgetful and forget how to ‘word’ at times and all the data can be saved and emailed to anyone you want! This is a great app for a lot of #spoonies and I just had to share for those that hadn’t come across something like this before.

*This post is in no way affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by any of the companies mentioned in this post.

Chronic pain at 25

Part of the reason I decided to begin blogging again is also part of the reason I stopped blogging before. I am a Chronic pain sufferer and have been for over 5 years now. I struggled to get the help I needed when it first began which caused me to become extremely depressed and anxious.

Shutting Down

I shut off from a lot of my friends and closed my blog and deleted all trace of it as I was fed up of ‘moaning’ about the pain constantly. I’ve recently realised that sometimes to cope with chronic pain you need an outlet where you can vent and moan so you can clear your mind and take control again.

Keeping Track

As I’ve come to realise this I’ve decided I’m going to document what goes on with my various appointments, to help me keep track, vent & moan on bad days and make others aware of how chronic pain affects lives, and hopefully find other’s who have learnt coping techniques and to hear their story too. If you’ve got this far then here is my story.

Lower Back Pain

Since my pregnancy with my eldest daughter in 2010 I have had excruciating lower back pain. It all began with struggling to climb the stairs in our first flat whilst pregnant, I’d struggle so much I’d be in tears. I thought at the time it was just typical pregnancy pains until it continued about 6months after my eldest was born.

X-Ray Results

I eventually got to a point where everyone was telling me I had to go to the DR’s and find out what was going on. Eventually, I did and an x-ray showed I had scoliosis of the lumbar spine and low disc space in L4-L5. My GP referred me to physiotherapy which wasn’t helping and due to unfortunate circumstances at the time I became unable to afford the fare to get to my physiotherapy sessions and gave up trying to seek help.

Chronic Pain

After a few years of struggling with the pain and trying to manage it with over the counter medicines, I got much worse especially a few months after the birth of my youngest daughter. Over time it got to the point where I could barely pick her up, so I went to my local GP to try and get some help.

Physiotherapy, Again

Again I was referred to physiotherapy which didn’t go well at all. After the first session, I hurt for almost 2 weeks! By the third session, I was barely able to walk for the next 3 weeks. I went back to my GP and explained the pain was worse and explained how it travels down my leg and at times I can’t walk or move my legs, attempting to lift my youngest up gives me extremely painful spasms, all of it combined is exhausting and depressing and on top of it all on really bad days I’m extremely nauseous too.

Medication

I was prescribed Amitriptyline, Duloxetine, Naproxen and Co-dydramol to try and help manage the pain & the depression. I was surprised to find out that some anti-depressants are also used for nerve related pain but after doing a bit of research discovered they are quite regularly prescribed for this reason. Unfortunately, the medication does very little but I am at least able to sleep a bit better on the Amitriptyline which is some relief.

Another X-Ray

I was sent for more x-rays which showed lordosis of the thoracic spine which shows signs of muscle spasms. This indicates its likely to be a nerve problem which it seems my GP must have worked out as she prescribed the amitriptyline from the start. When I attended my last physiotherapy session the physio decided it was best to release me and refer me to pain management as he said it was clear the exercises had aggravated the situation and he didn’t want to hurt me more and he made me a referral marked as ‘urgent’.

Pain Clinic

I now have to wait until the 14th December for my pain clinic appointment, which after seeing the waiting times at some hospitals I’m quite lucky I got an appointment this year. I’m hopeful I can find ways to manage the pain and remain as active as possible with their help as being stuck indoors most of the time and unable to enjoy simple things without suffering for it has had a major impact on my mental health and my family.

Reaching Out

I’m hoping to connect to other Chronic pain sufferers by sharing my story here and keeping track of my progress. If you read all of this post then, Thank you for taking the time to do so and please feel free to contact me in any way if you want to share your story or just a chat.