Chronic pain: "It's a trap!" - Giant lobster looking creature from Star Wars

So this blog is a day late because…I WENT ON VACATION Y’ALL!! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I went on my first vacation in over 6 years and BOY, was it overdue. I spent the past weekend getting lost in Asheville, NC with my roommates and could not have enjoyed myself more. I turned off my phone for 3 days and unplugged from my usual life to settle into life in that gorgeous little hippie mountain town. I climbed waterfalls, I hiked through the woods, I ate a billion weed cookies, I explored, I adventured, I napped, I drank…it was incredible.

Now, I know what you’re thinking and yes, 6 years is a VERY long time to go without a vacation. Here is where we get into today’s ramble:

One of the primary triggers for my chronic pain is sitting. Such a simple thing, right? Think about all the time you spend sitting down: at work, in the car, on the couch, at the movies, on an airplane, at a restaurant, while waiting at the DMV, etc. etc. Because I damaged my hip flexors and pelvis and because my hips were out of alignment for so long, I can’t sit comfortably for more than about 20 minutes at a time. After each period of sitting, I need about an hour or more of standing or lying (face down) before I can comfortably sit again. Sitting longer than that causes my hips and pelvis to contract TO THE EXTREME, and I will be dealing with a bevy of symptoms that can last up to two weeks including: tightness, pain, and nausea strong enough to wake me from my sleep, make me sick enough to my stomach that I will be glued to the toilet all day, or just plain make me want to pull all my hair out.

So, now think about all those daily routines that involve sitting and imagine what it would be like if you had to stand instead: the whole day at the office, for the entire length of a movie, while eating a meal at restaurant, etc. Now, think about all the things that you just couldn’t do because standing isn’t an option: flying, driving long distances, etc. Let me tell you something, if you want to make people REALLY uncomfortable really quick, just stand up in the back of a movie theater or while eating at the dinner table. Nobody knows what to do.

See where I’m going with this? Put simply, traveling is a real fucking bitch with chronic pain. Aside from not being able to sit, there’s the anxiety that comes from being away from your comforts, and the things you know and have that can help relieve a flare up in pain. Hence, my 6-year hiatus from vacations. My body became a limiting factor for travel, and in a way, it started to make me feel trapped in Charleston. I couldn’t get away from this place literally because I couldn’t get in a car and drive anywhere, and so by proxy, I started to feel figuratively trapped in my own life here.

And this is what it really boils down to, y’all: chronic pain, in my experience, feels like being trapped. To start, there is being trapped inside your own body. As a college athlete, and especially as a pole-vaulter, I had such a good awareness of and relationship with my own body. In order to execute the vault properly, you need to know your body’s capabilities, its weaknesses, its ins and outs, if you will. Body awareness was such a huge part of sports and my life. After 8 years of pole-vaulting, I knew my body. After 4 years of competing at the Division I level, I felt strong and capable in my body and I knew what it could do.

All of that changed when my pain developed. Sure, over time, my body grew weaker and weaker, and that has been difficult to deal with. The loss of strength in my body is something that has always bothered me, but what has been far more difficult is the diminishment in the familiarity I had with my body, the loss of that connection I had with my muscles and limbs and body as a whole. All of a sudden, my body became unfamiliar. Things that it used to be able to do with ease now brought sudden intense pain, pain that lasted for days, weeks, months, years.

At the start of it all, I had no idea what my pain triggers were and as time progressed, more and more triggers developed, meaning I had even less of an understanding as to what would cause a flare up. When my pain was at its worst, I could barely walk more than half a mile and would get so sick to my stomach that I would go days without being able to eat. I’d run out of my classroom in the middle of a lesson, having narrowly avoided pooping my pants. You know how you tell someone about something bad that happened and they say, “It could’ve been worse, you could have shit your pants”? That’s not funny to me anymore. Then one day I woke up and couldn’t sleep on my back anymore. I slept sitting up for almost a year and half. You get the picture.

Very quickly, my body became a prison. What was once a vessel that I had full control over (or at least a perceived sense of control), a vessel that was strong and capable and predictable had become weak, riddled with pain, and worst of all, unpredictable. I felt like I didn’t know my own body. I felt like I had no control over my own body. I felt trapped inside my own body, and no mater what I did (40+ medical providers, massage therapy, surgery, acupuncture, chiropractic, injections, x-rays, MRIs, physical therapy, talk therapy, medication, you name it) nothing seemed to give me back that sense of control or agency.

And as is always the case in life, when the physical realm starts to falter, the emotional and mental spheres are not far behind. I would definitely say that anxiety and depression are prisons of their own, prisons of the mind, if you will. And LET ME TELL YOU, gurl, that adding that layer of chronic pain took this situation to A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL. I say this as I eye my new prescription of Ativan in the corner, stashed away for emergency situations.

Like I said before, the unpredictability that came with my chronic pain was by far the worst part of the deal. Read any psychology textbook and it will tell you that intermittent reinforcement is one of the strongest, most effective methods of conditioning. That is exactly what happened to my body. One week, digging into my knotted muscles with my lacrosse ball would provide mild relief and the next week it would trigger two weeks of THE MOST intense pain I’ve ever felt in my life. So you better believe I threw that fucking lacrosse ball away IMMEDIATELY. I was taking no chances.

And so, this conditioning of course paved the way for SO MUCH ANXIETY. And then of course that enormous amount of anxiety paved the way for some really fucking intense depression. From that stems isolation. From that stems more anxiety and depression. From the stems more physical pain. THE CYCLE OF IT ALL *places back of hand on forehead and sighs deeply*

I’ll write more on anxiety and depression in future posts and tell you a little more about how they interact/feed off of/feed my chronic pain, but for the purpose of this rant, these elements all worked together to make me feel like pain is all I would ever know for the rest of my life, be that physical, mental, or emotional pain.

In conclusion, a three-day trip to a mountain town four hours away may not seem like that grand of a vacation, but for me, this vacation was a HUGE victory, both physically and mentally. This trip represents four years of sweat, blood, tears, and a ton of time, money and energy. I have worked my ass off (literally, what little ass I did have before has completely disappeared) to repair the damage that has been done to my body. I have read, researched, consulted, treated, and worked to get better. Every day I am working my hardest to gain the smallest fraction of an inch forward in the metric of progress.

And this weekend, my hard work paid off. A trip that even just a year ago was a physical and mental impossibility happened with relative ease. I set aside my anxiety and fear, I accommodated my body’s needs (aka set the seats down in the back of my Nissan Rogue and laid down while my roommate drove), and I made it to Asheville to frolic in the forest. My radius is expanding, my confidence is growing, that deeply held belief, that I would be forever trapped, is starting to slowly starting to chip away.

Until next time. Peace, love, and waterfalls.