TRYING TO BE COMFORTABLE WHILST IN PAIN.

Another week and more flares…or continuous flare, I’m not entirely sure anymore. A flare either way. How trying to be comfortable whilst in pain is an exhausting task in itself.

If you have chronic illnesses, especially anything that involves chronic pain, then you’ll know the struggles of trying to make yourself comfortable. How many positions can you sit or lay in on the sofa or in bed to be in the least pain? Far too many. It’s a case of finding which position limits how much the pain affects you so that you can have some for of rest to try and allow your body to recover. This may include changing positions every ten minutes because the pain has overcome the comfier position. It’s a game of musical chairs except it’s one chair and you’re competing with pain - pain usually wins. 

This week on flare-up mode I have mainly been competing with the ongoing severe lower abdominal pain which then affects my lower back, hips and down my thighs. The pain that stops me in my tracks, sometimes it even makes me drop to the floor. I end up hunching over in pain into a curled up ball and not much can be done about it. This is where I am either in bed in a cocoon of blankets or on the sofa…in a cocoon of blankets. I ended up putting a back heat pack on that lasts eight hours but turned it around to my front then held in place with my giant granny pants (ladies, this is my pro tip if your periods are bad or suffer with gynaecological issues as you don’t have to keep refilling a hot water bottle). Is it too soon for my electric heated blanket to come out? That’s probably coming out next week. The frustrating part is that I get fevers with my pain so I end up  sweaty mess but I still need to wrap myself into a cocoon to keep myself as comfy as possible. Also with this flare, it’s made my urgency worse to the point where three sips of a drink I’d be hobbling to the toilet immediately needing to go. Urgency is not fun in the slightest which makes leaving the house something you don’t want to risk when in a flare (it happened a lot at university where I’d just have to drop everything and run to the toilet, there’s no build up to needing to go it’s a sudden needing to go which is very frustrating). 

Trying to get and keep comfy feels like a never-ending task for me and, when I am around other people, I am very aware of how fidgety I must look to others. I shall be in my cocoon for a couple of weeks now, laparoscopy number two is now only 6 days away. 

A back heat pack wrap used for my abdominal pains instead.