NaBloMoPo; Still Sleepless In Florida

The month of November is NaBloMoPo Basically it requires that you post in your blog every day for the month of November. I wanted to give it a try as it should be interesting. I signed up on the NaBloMoPo site but since I have two blogs I put the url to one of them in my description, so this blog may not she up as part of it. That's okay though, I don't mind.

With this blog I think posting every day will do a couple different things:

1. 
   
   Give a good idea of how chronic pain and depression vary from day to day which is one of my goals for this blog
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Give me a daily outlet for thoughts/emotions/frustrations/whatever crops up
   
   
   
3. 
   
   It sounds like fun
   
   
   
4. 
   
   Will force me to find things to post about every day which will result in me paying closer attention to my days and probably seeing things I did right or enjoyed rather than just the negative pain and depression stuff
   
   
   
5. 
   
   It will also give me practice at writing and that may help me regain my enjoyment in writing and result in me writing essays, poems, or stories like I used to.
   
   
   

Well it is 3AM here and I am awake. I'm headed in to being awake for 48 hours. I tried to sleep during the day Tuesday and just couldn't do it. My pain level has been high since Monday evening but my meds have kept me out of a pain crisis. I tried laying down for over an hour, no lights on, but it just hurt too much so I got up. I just want it to stop! It is mentally exhausting to endure high levels of pain without taking it out on other people by snapping at them or losing my cool. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to deal with the pain and not fall apart, specially since falling apart makes the pain worse.

I know that some of this pain is muscular. My muscles are weak due to my staying off my feet to control my pain while waiting a couple of months for the radio frequency procedure. So now, when I do things, my regular pain goes up and I get the added pain from using those weakened muscles.

Knowing that my muscles won't strengthen themselves if I don't use them, I chose to take my niece for a very short walk (not even half a block and we have short blocks where I live). This did increase my regular pain and the muscular pain, but I also know that by working those muscles just a little bit every day I will eventually strengthen them and my pain will go down. Right now my entire pelvis is throbbing, I have sciatica symptoms in both legs (numbness, tingling, occasional shooting pain) and the muscles in my legs, hips, buttocks and abdomen are real sore. We hadn't gone even 2 yards when my muscles started to ache a little. This shocked me! I knew my muscles were weak but I did not realize they were that bad. If I don't do something to strengthen my muscles up again, I am going to quickly reach a point where I won't be able to walk because of excrutiating pain and lack of strength. So I am determined to do a little bit of exercise every day.

Tomorrow (well later today technically) I will take Bridgette (my niece) for that same short walk and when I can do that walk without increased pain, then I will make the walk longer; slowly increasing it until I can once again walk 1 mile without increasing my pain like I used to be able to do 8 years ago. I also know that with stronger muscles my spine and pelvis will have better support and that should result in a lowering of my chronic pain symptoms. Stronger muscles will also result in my being able to do more things before my pain level goes up. I would love to be able to run the errands and go grocery shopping like I used to. For 2 years now Ron has to do those things and I feel bad because he works all day then has to run to the store and do grocery shopping on weekends. That puts alot of stress on him and I feel like I don't fulfill my job and that I am useless and broken. I want to be able to do more than I can do now.

I also hope that Ron (My husband) will join Bridgette and I on these walks. He walked with us today and I really enjoyed having those few minutes with him. It felt good to be out of the house, even for a few moments and to be with him at the same time. We had a lot of fun on the walk pointing out trees and such to Bridgette and hearing her repeat the words. She got all excited about everyone's shoes that she stopped walking, picked up her left foot and said "Shoes..shoes", then we had to show her our shoes. She had a huge grin on her face. Ron and I told her we love her and for some reason she pointed out her ears to us then her nose and then her mouth, smiling and giggling between each one. It was just adorable! Having those few moments alone (sort of alone) with Ron just felt so good. I got warm fuzzies and my mood improved also.

I am behind on the stitching blogs I read because I've been reading some very interesting blogs by people who live with illness and/or chronic pain or both. Reading their blogs (from the first post to the latest post)  is what sparked the idea for this blog as a way to help me fight the depression. So I set up another folder in google reader (which is how I read the blogs) and added those blogs to my list. I will be trying to find a couple more blogs of people who suffer from chronic pain and reach out to them.

Okay time to catch up on stitching blogs then I'll try to sleep again and if that fails I'll pull out the square I am stitching and work on that. Most likely I won't be able to sleep until around noon which is when my body will hit the point of exhaustion. I hope it hits that point sooner rather than later. I had 4 hours sleep Sunday night, was up all night Monday and now I'm up for the night again. This is not good. Lack of sleep lowers the ability to deal with the pain, it also lowers my pain tolerance which results in my pain feeling worse than it actually is because I just don't have the mental/emotional strength to deal with it. Sometimes exhaustion is the only way I can get past the pain when it is high like it is now and sleep. It really sucks because it can take me a week or more to get back to sleeping at night once I have slept during the day, which interferes with homeschooling my son and everything else.