Palliativity 223: Re-Birthday

The long bleak Chicago winter drags on, but things are looking brighter than ever.

How am I doing with my chronic pain you ask?

Pretty awesomely 🙂

My body was once an unsustainable mess of twisted nerves, atrophied muscles and overcompensations.

The whole system was barely held together with medication, unhealthy habits and long painful nights.

This day marks my first Re-Birthday— RFA, the first win in the battle to end 15 years of chronic pain.

There have been many ups and downs since the original procedure and only now can I really appreciate the struggle of it all. First we burnt out the nerves that were sending false pain signals. Then we dropped all the meds. At this point I began experiencing an all new kind of pain- the legitimate kind. My body had been doing the best that it could to allow for minimal basic life stuff for over a decade. Suddenly I was tasking it to take on the world. With difficulty, I accepted that the fight wasn’t over just yet. It felt like climbing to the top of a mountain only to realize that there was quite a bit more to go. I bared down and started rebuilding.

This past year, I set about the long and exhausting process of reprogramming the entire structure of my upper body. The frayed nerves in my spine had forced all of the muscles from the back of my skull, down through my neck and upper back to do everything wrong. Imagine the agony involved if the muscles on the side of your neck just decided one day to be solely responsible for supporting the entire weight of your arms ALL DAY LONG. I used to call that “my life”.

Retraining my body felt like recovering from a stroke. I was attempting to build muscle mass which essentially had no connection to my brain. But once I got things rolling, the pain decreased as my strength and endurance grew exponentially. Months of constant rehab and exercise have certainly paid off. The photos above and below illustrate what a year of hard work and dedication can bring.

It may be a rough winter, but it’s a sunshine day in my mind.

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