Keith J. Myers – The Impact Of Pain Management On The Quality Of Life
In the summer of 2018, I got into an accident that left me with a daunting back injury. Weeks after being discharged from hospital, I was still going through episodes of chronic pain. Eventually, the pain took a toll on my quality of life, and I found myself enslaved to a painful life rather than a joyful life.
Did you know that chronic pain can go beyond your physical health and impact your emotional and mental health and the relationships around you? I had to learn the hard way. It took my injury to realize that I was taking too many things for granted.
It would be best if you had an endless supply of time, energy, and attention to be able to do everyday things like making breakfast, tying your shoelaces, balancing your checkbook, or walking your dog. After the injury, my time, energy, and attention were in limited supply.
I needed to find ways to explain to my family and friends what it was like to live with chronic pain to make everyone around me understand some of the daily struggles I was facing even with the simplest tasks.
I also found myself experiencing bouts of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. So I dived into my research and discovered that chronic pain was linked to an increased risk of mental conditions.
So How Do You Stabilize Your Life When Dealing With Pain?
When your body is in chronic pain, it keeps sending stress signals to your brain, leading to a heightened perception of the pain you are feeling and the perceived level of threat.
Research shows that over 62% of fibromyalgia patients experience depression, 56% will have anxiety, and 7% and 18% of the general population of the United States experience depression and anxiety.
To live a pain-friendly life, I first needed to understand that depression won’t go away just because you will. As a chronic pain patient who was experiencing anxiety and depression, I needed to reach out to my friends and family for support.
I sought therapy, connected with friends, meditated, went out in nature, and did anything that would give me a quick mood boost. Pain can also affect your quality of life through:
- Affecting your sleep
- Affecting your appetite
- Decreasing your mobility
- Difficulty in doing your household chores
- Decreased ability to exercise
- Moody or depressed
- Unable to participate in community or social activities
- Sometimes even your cognitive functions to think, reason, concentrate on a job, and memory is affected.
How To Improve The Quality Of Your Life
Think Positively
Though chronic pain or any type of pain can bring loss of your physical functions, career, favorite hobby, athletic abilities, and sometimes close relationships, your mind is stronger than you think. I remember grieving the incidence for a while, but never did I allow it to make me a victim.
Even in that state, you should take back your power and begin to accept pain as part of your life, but don’t let it control who you are, your ability to cope, improve, and thrive. With an optimistic attitude, pain relief is more likely.
Ask For Help
It broke my heart not to be able to do things for myself like I used to, but then again, it can be difficult to manage household chores when you’re in chronic pain. Managing finances, running errands, taking care of pets, kids, or spouses can be overwhelming during this period.
Remember to pace your life; let go of perfection, simplify your life, and ask for help. Strive in making your home a sanctuary from pain rather than the environment that aggravates the pain. Try techniques like using CBD oil and deep-breathing meditation to release your mind shelter from chronic pain.
Find A Pain-Management Plan
Chronic pain not only hurt my body but my emotions as well. It impacted my mood, relationships, memory, and overall quality of life, and if you let it, the pain will continue to do so. You shouldn’t let it!
Pessimistic emotions will only make the pain worse and cause depression and other emotional challenges. To avoid this vicious cycle, I asked my doctor to help me tailor a comprehensive pain-management plant that helped minimize both the emotional and physical impacts of chronic pain.
Written by Keith J. Myers – To find out more click on the link