People with pain windup, prepare to feel validated.
My life is Tetris. Logistically, medically, attentionally, and furniturely — it’s all Tetris.
Keep an eye on the last word in that series.
There’s a tall metal piece of furniture that’s supremely helpful for drying sheets on, and if you lower it to earth it becomes a water-resist rowing machine. Excellent piece. I recently put colorful tape on the bottom end because it had to be moved 2 inches out from its old position.
Tetris.
While speaking over my shoulder, I slammed my foot into it.
Despite having 2 people to mask for, I didn’t mask so much as lean over so they couldn’t see my face. I pounded the doorframe a bit (this rower is right by a door). There was silence from the other room.
So much for the immediate reaction. I hobbled to my bedside where all my gear is. I slathered it with magnesium oil (magnesium blocks a chunk of pain transmission) and then, when I could touch it, emu oil (which is a carrier oil that pushes stuff into the tissues).
I put sturdy shoes on, not because it felt great but because my feet needed to feel protected.
I swung my foot up onto a couple of pillows on the couch. Felt the shimmering signal of windup — where pain gets worse and more extensive after a blow, rather than easing off — go up my leg and through my hips, lighting up my piriformis, which has always been a bit of a diva. Spasms crept up my legs and flickered in my arms.
The active CRPS patches in my hands, wrists, and shins all pitched in, singing the song of their people.
I think of significant pains as having singing voices, and sometimes their singing drowns out other sounds. More often, it’s just a descant to whatever is going on; sometimes it’s a baseline running below everything else. Occasionally, it just shouts.
And now the muscle failure is creeping in, so I have to put down my phone and just listen to something loud enough to drown out this chorus. The fever-like prickling on my forehead and the comprehensive exhaustion are par for the course.
I just stubbed my foot. Nothing is broken. Were I healthy, I’d have saken it off in 10 minutes. This has trashed my day. This is a reality check, not an argument… this is what it’s like with longstanding CRPS.
This is the second or third “what it’s like” post, so I’ve made a new category for that. Not everyone wants to read it, and nor should they. Some people want to know exactly this, and this is for them.
I’ve put a lot of work into becoming more aware of my body because it’s easier to get leverage against faulty neurochemistry that way. Sadly, of course, dissociation happens for a reason and it gets hard to stay checked in — but I’m going to work on it.
Later.
I think today is for movies & grocery delivery rather than what I intended. I need a little constructive dissociation.
And that, ladies and gentlebeings, is windup, at least in me. It’s nuancedly different in everyone, but this is fairly standard — for this very nonstandard way of experiencing a normally trivial event.