How do you all deal with chronic pain? I ran out of advil yesterday, so I didn’t take my morning dose of two pills to deal with my always aching shoulder and fingers. With my fingers it is an aching and throbbing in the joints, and with my shoulder it is a dull pain with occasional stabs of sharp pain if I move the wrong way. I’ve broken every one of my fingers twice-three times, and you all remember the shoulder injury. So I just usually take my advil every day and soldier on. Without it today, though, I was just fucking miserable.
I know this is going to sound insane, but I’ve never told my (new) doctor about the shoulder or finger pain, because I guess I have the old paradigm of health insurance in mind still. I just don’t want him to know about it because I don’t want it in my medical records so insurance companies could use it against me. I have great insurance, but one day I may not. Obviously they are aware of the injuries, because those are in my records, but I never discuss the fact that pretty much every day all day I’m in pain. Again, if I take advil or alleve, I’m cool, so it doesn’t seem worth mentioning, but if I miss a dose like I did today, it sucks.
And I have absolutely NO desire to take anything stronger than advil. When I was on all that percocet with my shoulder injury, I was just miserable. Opiates give me a horrible histamine effect, and I sweat and itch, on top of which I am groggy and confused and doing stupid shit like using softsoap on my tooth brush. I just hate those damned pills.
Again, it’s not anything debilitating, and it isn’t ruining my life. It’s more irritating than anything else, and again, can be solved with two advils. But I imagine one day as I age it is going to get worse, so I should probably look at more creative ways to deal with it.