Pain and its Awareness

Pain and its Awareness

Pain in my ankle just hit a new level. I have been resting the last couple of hours in my bed. Just listening to music, reading Twitter and Facebook. Not really doing anything. And then I move my ankle just a little bit to get a little more comfy on the bed, and WHAM! I get hit with pain. And for some reason, I am wondering why it seems I can always feel my left ankle but my right, never a peep. I don’t even know it’s there most days. I know it’s attached and all, but I don’t feel it like I do my left. My left is constantly hurting and I am more aware of it than any other body part. I just find it a little lopsided. I try not to favor my limbs, but with this level of pain, it’s hard not to.

I am glad only one body part is affected. I can try to be more aware of my good ankle and notice that it is not bothering me. I wish my left would get the fucking hint and be like the right. But the left has been injured more than the right has. Suffering from a sprained ankle when you have foot drop is not a good thing. I have never recovered from it. See, before I went to the big hospital in Boston, I went to a smaller one outside of Boston because it was closer. I thought it was a good hospital. I couldn’t have been more wrong. So after basically doping me up and sending me on my way with no treatment or precautions if things got worse, I was wheeled to my friend’s car. It had started snowing and I couldn’t stand on my left side without pain. I fell and my ankle rolled. I should have known something was seriously wrong because I went one way and my ankle went the other. I didn’t feel a damn thing. I should have been smarting more than my back and leg pain. But nope. Not a thing. It wasn’t until two weeks later when I got feeling back in my leg after surgery that the sprain pain began. I was relearning to walk and my ankle hurt like a bastard. In the fall, I also sustained a nice bruise on the side that I fell on. I didn’t feel that either because I was numb. I thought it was the result of surgery as I had bruises everywhere.

Because I had foot drop and they were rushing me to get me on my feet, the sprain never healed correctly. This is all in hindsight. I didn’t know that the sprain would haunt me 12 years later and give me a pain syndrome. Course it didn’t help that I re-sprained it a year before the syndrome decided to take hold of my ankle. I remember thinking, during the day, that I was in a lot of pain. I almost always have my pain at night. It almost never happens during the day, but syndromes don’t care what time of day it is. It’s going to hurt you whether you are awake or in a deep sleep.

Once I noticed that this pain was different or possibly the start of something worse going on with my back, I got checked out. I must have seen 15 different doctors of different specialties and no one could figure out what was wrong with my ankle. They still don’t. Three have told me that I have CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. They were two physiatrists and my neurologist. But did my PCP believe them? No. He just kept sending me off to new doctors to see what was going on, to get me better. I don’t think I am ever going to be better. I don’t think I can recover from this much damage. And that is ok as long as I get my pain meds or the PCP is going to sign my death certificate. I don’t abuse my meds nor will I try to end my life on them. I am too fearful of the Tylenol content to wreck my liver before killing me to try and go that way. Besides, who needs pills when I have a rope?