Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Humor and Chronic Pain: A Top 10 List

Excerpt from: Psych Central (click for full article)

 

The Top 10 Clues You Live with Chronic Pain:

10- You wish there really was a Dr. House, M.D.

9- You watch every medical drama and understand the medical jargon, the differential diagnosis and worse yet, half the cases sound like they could be yours.

8- Your doctors talk to you like colleagues, instead of patients, because you are so well-educated on your condition(s).

7- The “middle of the night” for you is actually more like 2 o’clock in the afternoon because you deal with “sleep issues.”

6- Doing your chores, sometimes literally means just getting out of bed and taking a shower.

5- Everyday feels like PMS. (For Women)

4- You carry more pills than a pharmacy.

3- Your moods change…frequently.

2- You forget things like…wait, what was I talking about?

1- Your doctor sees you and touches you more than your spouse! (Ba-Dum-Ching)

Prepping for Spring with Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Excerpt from: About.com (click for full article)

 

Regardless of how much I do, I make sure to pace myself. That means biting off small chunks, paying attention to my body, and calling it quits when I need to. I used to struggle with that, but over the years I've gotten pretty darned good at it.

Pacing is also essential when it comes to gardening. I do genuinely like doing some work outside, but I'm fairly particular about the conditions I'll go out in. Windy? Drizzly? Forget it. Really hot? Nope. That, combined with my symptoms, limits how much I can do, so I've made sure to limit what needs to be done.

Still, it's overwhelming when I've got plenty to do inside and I realize it's time to get winter cleaned out of my flower beds (which are a huge mess because I was in pretty bad shape last fall.) I also think about the time my husband will spend mowing the lawn, weed whacking, and doing all of his other outside chores, and I realize that I'll be losing a lot of his help inside.

And yet, my need for having beautiful things around me will compel me to get out there and do the what's necessary for my low-maintenance flowers to thrive. I just have to be smart about it.

Stress, the Brain, & Chronic Pain

Excerpt from: Pain-Topics.org News (click for full article)

 

Patients with chronic or recurring pain know how stressful their conditions can become. New research suggests that there may be physiologic causes of such stress, mediated by changes in brain structure that make these persons even more vulnerable to stress and pain. While there were many limitations of the study, there are implications for the importance of stress-reduction techniques in helping to better manage chronic pain.

The study — conducted primarily by Canadian researchers at the Université de Montréal — included 16 patients with chronic back pain and a control group of 18 healthy subjects [Vachon-Presseau et al. 2013]. The research objective was to analyze relationships between 4 factors: 1) cortisol levels, which were determined via saliva samples collected during 7 days; 2) assessments of clinical pain reported by patients prior to brain scans (self-perception of pain); 3) the size of brain hippocampal regions measured using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); and 4) brain activations assessed with functional MRI (fMRI) following application of a thermal pain stimulus.