How is the pain today daddy?

 I have had really frustrating 6-7 weeks. I am probably in little less pain than last week but I am exhausted.  Exhausted fighting. Exhausted figuring out. Exhausted trying to find positives. Exhausted balancing work and pain. Thats all I have been doing. Exhausted sacrificing alcohol. Exhausted eating only healthy stuff Exhausted trying to force myself to do the exercise routines Exhausted to even enjoy simple things Exhausted trying to get PT appointment Exhausted trying to explain myself at work Exhausted avoiding friends and family. Exhausted feeling tired all the time. Exhausted feeling pain every minute of every day. Exhausted thinking life will always be like this

   If you haven't checked the previous  step , please do so as its important you look at all the possible options to manage your situation. This post I will talk about external factors and see if making different choice will help you in the long run. If you and your family members do different chores, try to pick up chores which has a little bit of flexibility on when you do it. This could be washing clothes if you have washing machine, washing dishes ( using dishwasher if available) etc.                   Couple of simple things you can keep in mind is, with dishes for example if you are washing before your dishwasher gets full due to running out of some utensils ( spoons, bowls, plates etc), get extra of those. Same thing applies for clothes too.   As most of us will have chronic neck pain and pain associated with neck issues, its important you start looking down with your eyes ( whenever possible) rather than ...

 If you haven't checked the previous step , please do so as I think the only way to manage this condition is by inflicting the killer blow by thousand cuts.  If you are able to do it, end your day with a happy baby pose  before sleeping. If it's effective, start the day with it as well.             Our nerves are over active due to pain all the time. This helps calm it down. I think it's called happy baby cause babies use it to calm themselves down and you always see a happy baby in that pose.             For me, it was effective for few days but after some time its effectiveness went down. I do go back to it on very stressful days and it still helps but I don't do it daily anymore. I suspect you might follow the same path. But it's a very useful tool to have in your armory. If you are able to do it, at least once a day lie down on a bed or couch with head hanging down. But please make sure that your si...

  Drinking a glass of lemon water ( drinking water + fresh lemon squeezed) when I wake up has helped me with my stomach issues quite a bit.                  I started doing this as I read it helps with inflammation and helps with digestion. After doing this for a while, I realized when I don't drink it, stomach pain and bloating increases. Remember every small dent you make to reduce any pain goes a long way in the long run in chronic pain conditions.  Also I realized to test if something is working or not, in the chaos of everything going on, this is one solid way. After doing it for sometime, stop, and then try to be aware of the effect of stopping.  I know it is hard with different responsibilities you already have. But you need to make 20-30 minutes in the daytime to have a power nap/rest.                  I do a variation of this nap but this is super important to help you...

When I was trying to make sense of the diagnosis, I started to see how I was up screwing things up more in the last decade.  Pushing myself in the gym, pushing myself to play sports without understanding the after effects, taking yoga classes and trying to persist with it ( and there was my work life which needed me to be on laptop all the time).  When you are in pain without doing anything, these are like hammer on your body. There were brief moments when I felt I was getting better but it was always followed by things getting worse every single time. In the last couple of years I decided, I am going to try rehabilitating myself but it will be on my terms and my understanding of my own body. I decided I will explore different ways to tackle ( use internet, physiotherapy, my own versions of exercises, food habits, lifestyle , massages, braces etc). I keep repeating to myself that things will go wrong, and wrong it did, but I tried to tell myself again and again that the idea i...

 I wanted to do this post early on as I learnt some of the things ( and honestly still trying to imbibe them) was crucial to get me out of the hopelessness cycle I get into when things go really bad. We are responsible for our condition and our life. I know we did not ask for this. It wasn't our fault. Even if it was, it doesn't matter. Here we are, right here, in this moment, we need to fully accept that this is our responsibility. If we need to get better, we have to own it. There is no other way.  We will have bad days. We will feel down. It's ok to feel this way. The constant pain is hard enough, don't be too hard on yourself. This also means that we need to learn to pick ourselves after bad pain days ( which will keep happening)  Treat every day as a new day. If possible ( though I haven't been able to internalize it yet), treat each day as a new game day. The way to win this game is to be in less pain compared to previous day, at the end of the day. Let us com...