The Mental Game of Chronic Pain

During a psychology class in law school (strange combination, I realize), my professor presented a study relating to happiness. She noted that as humans we have a natural happiness "set-point," meaning that while we experience temporary dips and boosts in happiness levels after certain events (job promotion, marriage, divorce), we naturally return to this set point after a surprising short period of time. At the same time, there are three things that have been found to cause a permanent decrease in happiness: death of a spouse, being fired from a job (even after obtaining a new job), and chronic pain. At the time, this meant little to me as I had never experienced any of those events.

Everything has changed. Chronic pain is a mentally exhausting and at times crippling experience. Yes, is it difficult to not be able to do the active things I love to do, but it is so much harder to not be able to escape the constant pain. When trying to explain this to someone, I often say that pain is the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing to cross my mind before the sweet freedom of sleep. For those 16 waking hours, I cannot go more than five minutes without thinking about the pain in my foot. Honestly, I cannot remember what I spent my time thinking about before my injury.

The mental effect of this pain is outstanding. I would have never guessed that pain could lead to such sadness and depressive thoughts. I often catch myself falling into the spiral of thinking of things that I would happily give up in exchange for a pain free life. This can also lead to a dangerous path of attempting to "barter" with God for relief.

There is only one thing that I have found to help with the mental anguish of chronic pain and that is to stay as connected as possible with my family and friends. Relationships and social activities provide an invaluable distraction from the pain. At the same time, it is sometimes incredibly difficult to make myself get out of the house to do these same activities that I know will improve my mood. Sometimes, I am just too overwhelmed with the thought of having to walk from the parking spot to the restaurant. But afterwards, I am always a happier person and have learned to just force myself to get out there.

Those dreaded words: "Give it More Time"

There is one phrase that I have heard in doctors' offices more than any other phrase: "Give it more time." This is also the single most frustrating thing to hear as a patient in pain. After each of my surgeries, the doctors were hopeful that I would have a full recovery, or at least that the pain would be reduced. Unfortunately, that was never the case. I understand that only with time and physical therapy does the full effect of a successful surgery become known. At the same time, when my pain level remains exactly the same as it was before surgery, it is hard to believe that more time will help at all.

During these times of waiting, I realize just how much this situation is out of my hands. I can research my condition for hours, do each and every one of my physical therapy exercises, and make dozens of phone calls to doctors for second opinions, but that is the limit. Most of my time is spent waiting for the next appointment, waiting for something to change, waiting to hear a new diagnosis that might have been my problem all along.

Currently, I am three months post-op from my nerve release surgery. Again, my foot feels exactly the same as it did before surgery. During a post-op appointment today, the surgeon asked me to give it more time. This is incredibly frustrating as, even though I know that my foot should not have any more surgeries done on it in the near future, I want to do something, anything to help. So I will be traveling to three specialists in Chicago over the next two weeks and hope that one of them will give some indication of a next step. Honestly, I just hope to hear anything other than "give it more time."