Day 8

Crankle the Vampire

I swear no matter what I do during the day to treat my ankle from swelling and pain, at night this thing just loves to keep me up.  Last night was painful as usual and although I've been wanting to get off the pain meds, it seems my pain is telling me the opposite.  Pain management is different for everyone, but I will continue to try limiting my use of pain meds to the evenings and keep my days to over the counter stuff.  However, I will increase my nightly medications to hopefully reduce some of my pain symptoms which will hopefully help me sleep better.  We shall see, stay tuned!

My Thoughts on Pain Medication

Drug drugs drugs, it's a love-hate relationship

I will say that everyone is different when dealing with pain, but it is important that you never endure pain just to get off pain meds.  I personally hate being drugged up, but if i'm in pain i'm not gonna sit around in agony, I'm gonna do something about it.  It's important not to just take pain meds because they are there, take them because you need them.  I've seen a lot of people in recovery from various injuries get hooked on pain meds, especially the opiates (i.e., Oxycontin,etc).  One good clear sign that you or a loved one might be getting hooked is if you begin to freak out when your meds supply runs low and get obsessed with getting more.  I think this is when you or your caregiver really needs to review your daily pain levels and encourage you to try using over the counter meds instead. I know with me I worried a lot about running out of my meds especially when I was in my worse pain.  You start to think, what if I don't have any more pills and my pain comes back.  Well, if your pain returns at a high level several weeks into recovery then if it comes back you don't need more pills you need the emergency room.

Today was a bad day!

They support me, but I'm tired of them!

Well, it was another long workday and overall pain wasn't too bad.  My day started off with my pain level being at around 7 out 10, which is a little higher than most days.  But, the previous night was painful and I think the pain just hung around through the morning and by afternoon it was down to between 3 to 5.  One thing I did notice about  today was that I was very clumbsy and must have caught myself from falling 5 or more times.  I feel my body getting tired of compensating for my injured leg.  My arms are tired, my other leg is beyond tired.  My right knee on my good leg is actually starting to ache a lot which worries me a little.  I might try to start doing some sort of chair yoga or something to properly stretch my body.  I am hoping that will help, but at the same time I need to realize that having this injury is a shock to the rest of my body and perhaps I need to spend a day or two resting more.  Meaning a whole day of only getting up when I really need to like only when nature calls.  Sounds like tomorrow will be boring...hold on everyday has being boring, so tomorrow will just be more boring which is just awesome (note sarcasm)!

Anyways, by the end of the day I was tired of falling all over the place and then I got tired of being tired which just made me tired.  My mood was terrible by the time my husband came home from work and when he asked what was wrong with me, all I could say was "just look at me".  Haha, I'm such an a-hole.  So yeah, today was a bad day.  I eventually told my husband how frustrated I was and that all in all I just wanted to walk again and the realization that I'm only 1 week out of 5 from being on my feet again made me very sad.  Can you blame me!

Happy walking!

Shannon