FightingRSD

On the whole, the majority of Chronic Pain (pain that lasts six months or more) often doesn't have a cure and it's a case of managing the pain to the best of your ability using various vices to achieve a better quality of life. Given the choice of managing symptoms or having a cure, of course we'd all vote for the cure every time, but the cure to combat all chronic pain just simply isn't available so the only choice that many of us have is to manage the symptoms.

Acute pain is short lived pain, for example a headache. You have a headache, you take some paracetamol or other simple painkiller that you can buy over the counter, go for a lie down and the headache probably goes away.

Chronic pain lasts 6 months or longer and often there is no cure. Painkillers won't take away the pain completely but help make the pain more tolerable. Chronic pain has a huge impact on your life. For many types of chronic pain, including CRPS/RSD, there isn't actually anything physically wrong causing the pain, it is caused by nerves firing the wrong signals, telling the body that there is something seriously wrong. For example, with CRPS/RSD it often feels like the affected area is burning, where in reality the area is not being burned at all, the feeling of the area being burned is caused by misfired pain signals and misinterpreted signals.

Managing chronic pain is complex and unique for each person. If you imagine a jigsaw, managing chronic pain is like building a jigsaw. There are many different parts of varying shapes and sizes and no two jigsaws are the same. Where all jigsaws would include things like sleep, exercise and pacing, not everyone's jigsaws would include things like music and art, for example. Each piece of the jigsaw symbolises something that helps the individual deal with their pain.

It's a common misconception that exercise means spending an hour at the gym or going for a run, where in reality, that simply isn't right. Exercise for the purposes here, can mean as little as a few repeat movements several times a day, it doesn't always mean an hour long workout at the gym. It's important to keep moving to maintain movement and strength that you have and build on it. It's a lot harder to get movement back once you've lost it!

Pacing is a huge part of managing chronic pain. A great analogy of pacing can be found on the website called the spoon theory, although the condition that the author has is actually lupus, it's the same principle.

With pacing, you can keep about the same amount of activity every day, whether it's a good day or a bad day.

Work out your time limits on activities such as sitting, standing, walking etc, how long you can do each activity on a good day and how long you can do them on a bad day. By limiting yourself to always stopping after the length of time you could do the activity on a bad day, you won't push yourself to do more on a good day and consequently suffering for it the following day.

Adapting the spoon theory, if you imagine that every day you have x amount of tokens. Each token permits you to do a task. Do tasks too closely together and you use them up faster. Use all of your tokens up and you'll suffer for it and possibly cause a flare up. Use the tokens wisely and more days will be good days.

For example
You need to wash the dishes. You can wash all of the dishes in one go, but it will cost you 3 tokens. These tokens could be used for washing laundry, going shopping, cooking, going out etc. They can be used for absolutely anything. If you wash them in small intervals with a rest between each interval, stopping before the pain increases forcing you to stop, it will cost you 1 token.

It is important to stop before the pain increases and becomes unmanageable. This enables you to do more things and have a regular amount of activity each day instead of doing one or two things, being in too much pain to do anything more and being disappointed and in more pain, when you want to do something.

Looking at the diagram below, for the sake of demonstration the three categories have been labelled 'manageable pain', 'getting uncomfortable' and 'more severe'. If you pursue an activity, without taking a break, your pain levels increase more and more. If you take breaks while the pain is manageable (indicated with the blue line) your pain levels stay manageable. This also leaves room for unexpected activities or tasks, because your pain has not yet gone into the 'getting uncomfortable' category, your pain is still 'manageable pain'.