The silence menance

I knew I was going to be sore today after yesterdays great events. What I didn't realise was just how sore and painful it was going to be. I know pain is hard to explain, as it all done by personal measure.

So I will try to explain it. Imagine this you try to sit down but the pressure in my hips is so great you think pokers are being pushed through them. Bending my knees is a random event depending on whether the pain is equal to light bruising or a donkey kick to them, but I can't tell which until I try. My neck feels like whiplash after a car accident, and my back is raw like a cheese grater has been rubbed up and down the lumbar region. On top of that there is this dull constant drone of sore vertebrae and the odd shooting pain that causes random yelps of shock.

I know it all sounds a little over dramatic, but this is the reality I live in thanks to a mixture of CRPS and Chronic back condition, and the affects of a fall from it. I am not looking for sympathy or pity, I am just trying to relay the reality people who have these conditions have to live with. There are various illnesses and conditions that are what I call the silent menaces, and I could list a few others that friends have varying from IBS and its extreme cousins to hearing difficulties. They are silent because they aren't obvious on the outside, but inside they are tearing the person apart. The level of discomfort varies from a good day with minimal pain to the hellish days where there is nothing but pain and that's all you are aware of.

Yes I can take medication, there is always something new that can be tried. Or that's the principle, having just phoned my doctor he recommend a day of anti inflammatory on top of everything else. But mainly rest and either heat or ice packs depending on what my skin can stand. And as any one with a chronic condition will tell you there are the days when nothing will touch the pain and remove it. In some cases this involves a night in hospital to see if there is anything further that can be done, but in reality all they really can do is administer even stronger drugs to induce sleep and force the body to heal itself. Hence I refuse to take the maximum amount of any drug so I can always alter it in relation to the pain.

Illness and its accompanying pain is a silence menace that to the subject is constantly living with. I just wish other people could see the day to day pain we have to live with. It would be interesting to see the reaction if they were plagued with it.