Sunday, April 3, 2016

Why I think taking pain and nerve medications is like giving up.

Pain

When do you come to the point in your recovery or ailment that you just accept that you will always be in pain? It's just your reality. Your obstacle to endure and persist to work through. Can we just accept that the repercussion from something has changed our whole life. How do we use our minds to move on to another level of comfort. Make our negative reality a positive. 

While dealing with chronic pain from my accident, I will not allow myself to become addicted to pills. Once you start using pain  and nerve medications, I think you are giving up hope of being able to make your body heal itself. 

The human body is a miraculous thing and if we treat it as such and feed it properly, it can heal and repair itself beyond our wildest dreams. If scientists can regenerate cells on their own with a chemical reaction in a dish, then you have to be aware of how much more powerful the body is. 

Throughout my journey doctors have been telling me that things are in my head. For 15 months after my accident, I was hit by a car while riding my bike, I walked around, tried to resume my life, and did physical therapy with bone on bone in my hip joint. From the impact of my hip on the ground, it shattered some bones and those fragments landed on my femur. The violence of the seat lodging where the sun don't shine tearing my hip labrum.  Eventually where my hip joint and femur were touching bone bumps developed.  Every step I took my hip joint and femur would grind against each other and my hip would try to go over where the bone bumps were, like it was off-roading on my femur. Doctors told me I wasn't really feeling that and it was something called Bursitis. I was injected 6 times into my bursa and it just landed me on crutches for a week after each injection. 

When you are going through test after test and Doctor after Doctor is telling you that you don't feel and hear a grinding with every step you take, you dig real deep to find the confidence and self reliance to fight on.  Your family and friends even doubting you because you look fine. You have to become the most honest version of yourself. You evaluate anything that causes you stress or could be toxic for you and you remove that from your life because you honestly don't have time for that bullshit.  This is your mental medicine. You're not taking a pill to eliminate the affects stress has on your symptoms. You're removing that actual cause of your stress and life becomes easier to handle. You find the truth in what really matters to you in this life because you want to live in heaven while dealing with pain not live in hell and try to be comfortable there. You find the simple joy in life and make that your heaven which leaves a lot of people, foods and behaviors in the dust. People feel hurt but you want to live in the truth to find solutions for your pain and if they don't live there too; it's toxic for you. 

I knew then and now, that if I took all the pills that they were pushing on me that I would never be able to solve the grinding. My left leg felt dead, it still does today and there was no way that they weren't missing something. I started to notice that my high protein diet was making me swell and stiff. I started reading more about holistic nutrition so I could still feel my body but reduce the pain and things that I could do naturally to combat my symptoms. If you use pharmaceuticals you can't feel and if you can't feel, you will never heal.  I decided to use marijuana for pain which makes life a lot slower and slightly more manageable. It's like living on the edge of bearable which is better than no relief. As I started to read about the affects of high protein diets and started to eliminate processed foods, dairy and limit my animal product intake. I was able to reduce some of the painful symptoms but was also able to feel my bodies issues a lot more. I was eliminating anything that could make me think I was feeling things I wasn't.  I took every tip to heart and followed every advice I was given.  Doctors wanting to continuously poke me with injections for false diagnosis. All the while still having major neck problems and nerve pains but my main focus was my hip. I knew there was something really wrong. 

Going back to a doctor who tells you that maybe things are in your head, is a very mentally challenging thing, especially when you're dealing with pain management without pharmaceuticals. Sometimes using them to give you a break for a day to do something you really want but only to have to go back to full pain the next day. I wouldn't say I found religion but I have definitely been directed to focus on the grace and divinity of my soul. You have to really learn how to perceive the world in a positive light; in spite of it. Focus on the good to drown out the bad, find your purpose and be willing to make an effort to make yourself live in that state. The true inner dialogue, the truth of who you are and what you want in life in order to overcome your reality to be strong and actually be and feel happiness while feeling pain. 

After 15 month of testing my doctor gives me my 6th injection into my bursa, a pocket along side the hip and says that it's time to remove my bursa because it's chronically inflamed and that's probably what's going on. This surgery would leave a large scar across my hip. Knowing this was wrong in my heart, I asked my dad to get me in to see another Orthopedist for a 5th opinion. 

This doctor listen to me. Months of what felt like screaming for anyone to believe me. He did. He did a diagnostic injection and ordered a contrast MRI from a different angle.  There it was. A fully torn labrum and bone on bone in my hip joint with the bone bumps. I wasn't crazy. It wasn't in my head. I cried. I never backed down. I may have had doubts. But I did everything I was suppose to do. Not just for my body but for my mind and my soul. I didn't do it the easy way and I finally got a break.  I needed major hip surgery. I actually had to have two hip surgeries within 7 months of each other. I've had to relearn how to walk and I'm actually still doing it. 

So, now back to my original question, when do we just give in and accept our reality of always living in pain.  I guess I just reminded myself that there's always a way to get to your next break and it's probably not going to be easy but it's definitely always going to get better.  If you take the pills they're shoving down your throat you take away your shot at actually getting better. 
Forcing myself to do physical therapy when I would rather be laying on the couch. 

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