Mind Over Matter!!

Today was another day of lying flat on my back and trying to heal from the surgery that I had a couple of days ago. I'm only on day 3 and after speaking with the surgeon apparently I will have about 10 or 12 days of real discomfort before the pain calms down a bit. The problem that I have is that because I have CRPS there is a good chance that the pain is worse because of that and it may take a little longer to heal because of my condition. I won't get into what type of surgery was done but now I have some metal implanted in my body and lets just say that there are a lot of jokes going on about it.

I'm finding my pain levels at the moment to be a real challenge because with CRPS your pain gets so exaggerated and it's extremely hard to tell what the real pain is like. Today is one of those days where I try to do anything to block the pain out including doing relaxation to try to calm my nervous system down. However even when I try to do the relaxation I find that the pain is to great and I have to stop or it makes the pain worse. Days like today are the ones that I find most frustrating because you have no control over your own body. What is frustrating is the level of effort that I put into trying to decrease the pain while using all the techniques that my physiotherapists have given me.

When my level of frustration builds like this I need to remind myself about the fact that this isn't going to get better overnight. I need to remember that if I don't stick to the program and the treatment plan that has been set out for me then I may as well say goodbye to any improvement at all. Tonight is one of those nights that I truly need to say " mind over matter". I'm finding it so frustrating however tonight because of those constant reminders of how things have changed being in my brain all day today. My oldest daughter was playing with me today and wanted me to pick her up to touch the ceiling. I then told her I couldn't because I needed both my hands. She then starts reflecting on how much fun it used to be when I did it. There have been days when she's looking through old pictures and she"ll say " remember when you had two hands daddy". These are the reminders I constantly get and it makes it hard especially if you don't know 100% that you'll get the use back.

It's at times like these that it starts that viscous circle of how things used to be, and that they will never be normal again. I have been trying much harder lately to try to change this way of thinking because this plays a big part in remapping my brain to bring about changes in it. The more I tell my brain that everything is ok and that things are going to get better the more likely I am to bring about positive changes within it. For someone reading this that doesn't have CRPS you would think that this was just an every day way of thinking and that it's all about having a positive attitude. However it's not that easy for those of us with CRPS. We have to trick our brain into learning these things over again, so that we can reprogram our brains so to speak telling it things are fine.

Nights like tonight take every last ounce of strength inside me. I know that I will be lucky if I get about 2 hrs of sleep. However I do need to stay positive and believe that tomorrow will be a better day. I just needed to vent today because days like today are the ones that are so difficult.