Renee Blare Christian Author

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

This question is more powerful than you may believe, and complicated in today’s world at least for me. It’s also multi-layered. It has to be. However, that aspect may be true for many not only for those of us in chronic pain. Don’t you think? I do.

How about some history for those who don’t know me. It may help put some context when I say that icky four letter word. You know which one I’m talking about… p-a-i-n? Nobody seems to have much empathy for those of us with chronic pain anymore. We are lumped into a much bigger category now. So maybe this will help.

My journey with pain started when I was born actually. I was born with a soft cleft palate which required numerous repair surgeries and some that didn’t get completed due to financial issues. (I needed to finish these as an adult— sinus cavity and nasal surgeries.) I did, however, have numerous ear infections which complicated matters and delayed the repairs resulting in additional surgeries and multiple Eustachian tube sets.

These issues caused speech impediments, dyslexia, and learning difficulties which I eventually overcame but not without establishing ingrained aversions to lab testing, needles, doctors, and many other institutional platforms and programs, not to mention educational issues that bled over from the complications.

That being said, it wasn’t far into my adult life I was faced with more health challenges which placed me (and my family) directly into oncoming traffic by all I despised, that is, the institutional platforms and programs. I, not long after my husband, became disabled.

You see, I had worked hard to go to university, graduate, test, and build a career as a successful pharmacist, become actually a pharmacy manager. To rise above all that I had faced and beat it. Even though I still dealt with epilepsy, osteoarthritis, migraine headaches, and flares of IBD (Irritable Bowel Disease) with little to no warning, my seizures were controlled, I was happy and financially secure, and I loved my God, family, and home.

I tracked it all without taking any hard core pain killers. I managed my pain with anti-inflammation meds, and joint injections, and suffered with the rest when and if it happened. I took care of my family when I wasn’t working 70 -80 hours a week. My husband took care of my family when I worked and he didn’t. We were a team and it worked.

That is, until it didn’t.

One week, I left town for manager’s training to a conference and when I came back, I couldn’t walk. The pain in my knee and leg was so bad, I could barely stand to do my job. I was in tears every day, every night, and then when I got up in the morning. Nothing worked. Nothing stopped the stabbing, searing pain in my knee.

It needed fixed and nobody could do it for three months. Two weeks later I was using crutches to walk to and at work. Two weeks after that, I was using a walker and then I was at home on the couch— unable to walk at all.

I was BEGGING the doctor to fix my knee.

When I did get the doctor to do the surgery, he told me at first he was only going to perform a partial knee replacement— my knee looked “fine.” Before I woke up in recovery, the surgeon informed my husband that he’d replaced my entire knee joint due to excessive damage, bone deterioration, and decay, and had completed the surgery in forty minutes.

I had also been given a “light” general anesthetic to supplement the spinal anesthesia since the “spinal block” that was intended by the anesthesiologist had proven ineffective.

I woke up in the recovery room feeling as if I had never been moved into the surgical suite and the surgery had not been performed— I felt literally abandoned. No nurses, no doctors, nobody around me. I was panicked. My blood pressure was highly elevated and I was sweating which was very irregular for me.

I had no recollection of anything AT ALL. Not even seeing my husband in PRE-OP.

I asked for my husband and he was not allowed into the recovery room for over an hour.

THIS SURGERY is the one that I DISCOVERED that someone somehow severed my lumbar-sacral plexus on the right side. I began having nightmares and flashbacks about 25-30 days post-surgery date of the actual surgery (knee replacement) including feeling the procedure itself. I was paralyzed and unconscious but aware of the entire procedure. The surgeon, teaching hospital, insurance company, and anesthesiologist were made aware as soon as I was. They did nothing. I reported this to as many people as I could. Nothing happened. I was told nothing “could” be done.

My rehab for my knee replacement was inhibited by severe right foot pain and after nine different doctors, I was ultimately and finally diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Type 2 or Causalgia by a neurologist and confirmed by a pain specialist.

Since that diagnosis, the CRPSII has progressed to include my entire right leg and hip, upper-lower back and right shoulder, right hand, and wrist. I already had pain in my right shoulder from a frozen shoulder with two manipulations to release it after two years but the CRPS does make it the pain from the torn labrum worse during flares.

I’ve had two surgeries to insert and revise a Spinal Cord Stimulator in my back. My surgery count is now 28 (nothing compared to my husband’s 42) and I’m thinking of getting my scars tattooed like railroad tracks.

I don’t work anymore. I take prescription pain medications for pain but I still hurt and I take other prescriptions for other stuff. I’m treated differently by anybody who sees me and sometimes quite rudely but I guess that is their problem but mine.

I still have migraines and multiple stress headaches including cluster headaches from the pain spikes but I’ve dealt with migraines since I was a teenager. I can stay ahead of those with medication and treatment. It’s the flares of pain causing the stress or caused BY stress that gets old.

I can no longer walk or stand for any length of time, so I now use a wheelchair and my Service Dog, Bo for any extensive mobility— beyond the confines of my home. Even walking around my home is too much most days.

That’s my context… want to know how I do it and not succumb? How I make myself COMFORTABLE in this thing I call life?

—- Strategies to Increase Comfort in Daily Life —-

My Strategy— All is Well With My Soul

As much chaos and pain I have experienced in my 54 years on this big beautiful blue ball we call Earth, I can say one very important thing at the beginning and end of each day. “All is well with my soul.”

How can I say that? Because I’m forgiven of all, and I forgive all even the one who caused me this great agony I face every morning— and night.

ALL IS WELL WITH MY SOUL.

In Christ,

Renee B.