How do I cope with the excrutiating pain

So sory you are down.   It is soul destroying when you have a little hope to have it dashed like that.   I have given up hope of a cure, maybe hopeful that there might be some medication that will help but that seems to be dwindling fast.   I take it a day at a time.   Bad days I  cry sometimes scream with pain and take as much meds as possible to send me to sleep so that I do not feel the pain and that is no way to live.   Good days I enjoy as best I can.   I don't hope any more.   My little puppy is helping me more than I had ever thought she could.   She is settling down a bit now at 3 months and knows when I am ill.   She just jumps on my lap, licks the tears from my face and cuddles into me.   She just knows when I'm down.   She's the best thing that has happened to me lately.   We bought an elecric bed and i think it is helping.   I sleep sitting up and can get my neck into a good positiion so that I am not in as much pain in the mornng.   Social Services are looking into  helping me with costs for a spa bath to be put into my house in the hope it might ease out my pain.   I will try anything.   Not dancing much but still go when I can,  Waiting on result of op on foot.   Last three ops were cancerous but caught in time so hoping this one will be the same.   I have days Jeanette when I cry  a lot.   I try not to as I know it upsets my partner.    But we are only human and can only take so much.. Doc wants me to have anti-depressants but I don't see the point,   I am on 30 pills and morphine daily as it is.   I don't want more pills to make me sleepy and out of it.   I really hope you pick up a bit.   I have really bad days and then get myself back on track again until next time.   Don't think there is much more we can do.My little Poppy is wonerful.  She makes me laugh at her antics and I take her for a walk about three rimes a week when I am not too sore, along  with my yougest daughter and her labrador.   We meet lots of other people we know with dogs so it has opened up a new life for me.She is a gorgeous little dog, all flluffy in white and pale brown fur, her face a bit like a spaniel and she is full of life but so very undestadning for such a little puppy.   I love her to bits.Jeanette I so hope you pick up again.   I know how you feel and it is not a nice place to be.That'swhy I got Poppy.   I knew I had to have something else to focus on rather than myself and my pain.   She is lying next to me on the couch at the moment cudding in while I type this.   What more could I ask for?    A loving little cuddly friend who helps me take away my pain.   Hang on in Jeanette and enjoy the good days when they are there.   I am thinking of you.

Carol xxx

Poppy sounds adorable and she seems as if she is doing you some good even if it is just slightly!! I have kept myself upbeat but as you say some days are worse than others.As you know i have a good family and i can talk to them  more so malcolm but for some reason i just told him the bare facts maybe until i got my head around it!! But i am not giving in just yet i have my friends from pain clinic we meet up  once a month for lunch so i am lucky i can still go there when we meet up we have a bit moan put the world to right moan about our pain and then eat lunch!! lol (after we take our tablets)lol  I know there will be no cure for me but i will pick myself again and carry on cant do anything else really can we!!! I hope the results for the ops on your foot is good news.I amglad your bed is doing you some good it might be expensive but if it does you good and you can get some sleep it is worth it.  I have had some really bad days a few years ago and i dont want to go there again. I have a good GP who is also sympathetic and who listens he does not fob you off. I am happy poppy can make you laugh we have to grab it with both hands while we can (laughter) because some days it is few and far between!! I have been offered antidepressants and i refused to take them but i know some people need them.It is just if you get that far down it takes a while to pull yourself up but ever the optimist. You get tired of taking tablets but still always someone worse off than me!! Well enough of me rambling on and this site is a god send somewhere you can moan/ramble on and no one minds.  so keep laughing Carol and hope to hear from you soon

jeanettexxx (give poppy a hug from me) xx lol

I dont know what i thought when i came out of the hospital after the consultant  said that. Did i feel abandoned i dont think i did because for me i have been doing it for for 49yrs looking and hoping he said he will stay in contact with me if i want to ever see him again. I think what it is they and myself have tried everything under the sun to to speak. When i cleared my head and started to think clearly i understand a little bit because where do you go what do you do (treatment wise) now!!!  

Arran103

Just a quick post to see how you are and how is poppy coming on? Did your spa bath do you some good? Are you still getting out with your puppy for walks? Do you still go to your dances? All these questions lol Did you get the results about your operation on your foot i hope it was good news Well you take care hun and hope to hear from you soon

jeanette xx

Could'nt find a proper edit button.......?

Just wondering.  Is it possible that the amount of meds that anyone feels might be necessary bears a direct psychological relationship to the amount of abandonment they sense from those they rely on most....their professional advisers ?  If that were the case, it would all boil down to the professionals creating a dubious need and then fulfilling it.....which might satisfy their need to feel they're doing something,  whilst, at the same time,  ignoring the real issue....how to improve our understanding of best ways to manage our condition.

Gerry. I really don't wanna go trough the same process as you I'll freakin' do everything in my power, use every bit and pit of my mind (and there's aplenty of either one of them :P) to make this awful thing of cervical spondylosis go away. This isn't exactly how I planned to live my life, in short, the idea was about curing cancer and me being on the other side (i.e. the one who never gets cancer :P), therefore what I find myself into is kind of a far off deviation from my original thought. Kind of a completely opposite of it, except not entirely: I don't have cancer, I'm not from the other side, just Vulcania (which only was other side for imbeciles who canot read words (like Romulania today, for instance :P)).

Might have sought up a bit more of a beer than strictly necessary so please excuse my grammar and excuses, but I have a feeling you know what I'm talking about :P

Cheers.

If that's even possible :P

So,  I view my C/S as my 'normal',  and that seems to make it easier to positively explore different 'home based' methods to ease the symptoms.  It's a good feeling to discover that the symptoms can be controlled in some small way,  without always relying on outside interventions only, and without playing a 'game of death' with the disappointments of unreal expectations of some return to a non-C/S 'normality'.  

Question: "Is this normal? Is this pain normal?!!"

Answer: "No, it's not normal. Normally it would hurt more".

I'm trying to find some effective exercises I can do which lower the pain and discomfort, because definitely too much or the wrong ones can do more harm than good. So far I'm taking 2-3 daily walks where I'm looking around so my neck doesn't stiffen. Other exercises: standing still, I'm moving my head up/down several times then left/right. Also something with a rubber band to mobilize my upper body muscles. No miracle so far, my body never returned to the pre C/S state, but they seem to make the condition more tolerable.

What about you, did you do some specific exercises all these years or just lived them naturally?

Combination of both really, with greater emphasis on the natural way, or just what feels right.  Intuition is a great thing really,  especially where the complications of symptoms don't help our advisers to get to grips with the issues,  intuition about what seems to work best is probably our best tool.  If my neck is particulatrly stiff I'll do the usual head rotation and up/down exercises to try to get some flexibility going,  but I'm very careful about never passing the point of strain.  The only exercise I've ever found to give some instant result is stretching one arm out horizontally, and twisting hand clockwise/anticlockwise repetitively.  It 'cracks' the shoulder and neck joints and restores more comfortable flexibility...but it only works when the neck is recovering from a stiff phase, not when it's entering one, nor during it.  Otherwise,  my focus is more on avoiding the triggers....Don't look upwards, no jerky movements to look behind,  no overstretching with arms (particularly above), no lifting anything too heavy etc.  Basically anything that strains the neck should be avoided if possible.  Add to that, the quickest way of all to relieve cyclical symptoms, is to alter sleeping/napping postures (sleep on sofa, or whatever).  The symptoms change with sleep posture alterations, sometimes they disappear completely,  and it's just a matter of remembering the most suitable postures for future use.  That works best of all for me.

"The purpose of pain is to protect the organism from injury"

That's something I'm more than a little interested in.  I don't necessarilly agree with the purpose you describe....pressed for time just now, but will offer an opinion tomorrow.

And so to my delayed response to:

"The purpose of pain is to protect the organism from injury".

That's a pretty good definition for the purpose of 'pain'.  It covers a lot of angles....but it also misses some.  It's called the Cartesian model (after Rene Descartes), and it has been accepted for 500 years as a philosophical true model.  It's based on the 'hand approaching a flame' theory which says that the pain intensity increases as the threat increases.  It works for most straigtforward injuries,  but unfortunately falls short on referred or radiated pain,  on imagined pain (as in Phantom Limb pain),  and on the non-requirement for pain whilst we sleep or are non-conscious.

In the last 20 or so years there have been new theories put forward by the top pain scientists (or pain speculators) which dispute the Cartesian Model.  They suggest that pain is an 'emergent construct' of the conscious mind, is different for each individual, and is vulknerable to many influences (memory, conditioning, assumptions etc). As such,  they say that there is no direct linear relationship between a pain and an injury,  and that any patient is vulnerable to constucting their own sense of experience of any pain event, wheter 'real' or 'imagined'.  THat is the current theory taking hold,  as explained in the book 'Explain Pain' by Butler and Moseley.  These are the top dogs in the field at the moment, and many Physios adhere to their overview.

I'm inclined top disagree with both theories, and particularly with the recent one,  because they just don't tick all ther boxes for me, especially where referred pain ( described as a malfunction),  and pain-free sleep (no explanation at all from either camp) are concerned.  So I'm leaning towardfs a description of the 'purpose of pain' being  .....'Pain is a tool, employed by the autonomic protective systems (nervous system and immune system) to confuse or restrain the conscious mind from reacting to any injury or threat innappropriately'.  By that,  I mean....we know the autonomic systems respond to threats/injuries constantly, 24/7, and we know they always attempt to heal....so,  they must somehow ensure that their efforts are not negated by our conscious interference.  We are capable of consciously worsening any threat/injury situation by, for instance, applying dirt to a wouind, and our protective systems need to be protected from such interfgerence.  So, a perception of pain is created in the conscious mind to slow down, or restrain, our conscious deliberations before any bad decisions can be made.  What instigates the creation of that pain perception is another question....my guess would be the nervous system.

All getting a bit heavy-duity there. Hope I haven't given anyone a headache for nothing !

At some point, opioid medication may become the only option...

Personally,  I've had Oramorph, which is an opoid,  but only when I couldn't sleep with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (another referred 'mimicked' syndrome caused by C/S).  It did what it said on the label, and helped get through the worst phase,  but I didn't like the next day after effects (too disconnected).  I'd rather attempt to function if at all possible without a blurred mind.  I suppose, at the back of my mind I'm thinking that heavy meds will mess with my normal toleration levels, and I'm unwilling to test that theory.

I'm a bit dubious about that quote.  Seems a bit 'black and white' to me,  almost like there's no middle ground to play with.  I wouldn't write off 'control' as a contributing factor to easing pain so readily.  Some might see 'control' as some sort of regimented strict denial of symptoms....but that's not 'control',  it's just denial,  which is a totally different thing.  Control is really about having a meaningful understanding of what the complaint is,  and using that knowledge to devise and adopt a strategy for dealing with it.  It doesn't necessarily mean having to adhere to strict rules which don't allow other options of exploration.  I'd say that a sense of control evolves from studying the problem, and becoming familiar with its contrariness,  and that sense of evolving control can effect the perceived intensity or toleration of the symptoms.  What it does, is give a sense of dealing with the issue in a third part way, almost like it's someone else's issue,  and that's probably the best way of perceiving it because any decisions about how to manage it are likely to be sensible.  In a way,  we becopme our own best advisers ! 

So ideally one would avoid opioids at all, and if necessary, take the least amount possible. Seems like there's also some effectiveness in switching between them when tolerance develops.

I feel the same about gapabetin, pregabalin and similar anticonvulsant drugs. Don't trust them but if pain would dictate and they would be effective in releaving it, I guess they're the lesser evil.

I tend to agree. Everybody has a toleration point where the meds flag up as the only possible solution, however temporary.  The question there might be.....do people have different toleration levels for the same pain experience.  I don't think so.  What they might have is different conscious approaches to how they might deal with toleration levels which are under constant pressure with a chronic condition. This will be disputed,  but I believe that for the same injury/threat,  under the exact same circumstances (say a cut finger, or a toothache), the same amount of perceived pain is common to everyone, with no exceptions.  If alb test was conducted with 10 males, all aged 30years, with similar physique, and each was given a similar paper-cut to tip of finger,  I'd bet that they all would report the exact same level of pain.  THeir toleration of that pain might differ according to their conditioning  i.e.  if some of them are aware that there's a painkiller available,  then their toleration might be lessened in direct relationship to that knowledge.  Once that standard is built into an equation,  then by adding variables we can arrive at an equation which accounts for all pain experiences and the expected accompanying toleration levels.

My instincts tell me that pain toleration levels are the same for everyone across the board.  THe real problem is that we have no framework to compare them by,  and that leaves the toleration level at the discretion of each individual, and depending on their conditioning or influences,  those toleration levels,  which should be stable, are vulnerable to movement up or dowen the scale....usually down.  What I think is missing is an understanding of the 'commonality' of the pain experience,  which can be organised and defined on chart so we can all make good comparisons with our own experience,  and thus be able to compare expected toleration levels.  I know they've developed the 'pain scale' ,  but that doesn't come anywhere near what I'm suggesting.  The toleration issue is avoided and left open to individual interpretation, both by patients and professionals.  That makes it an issue which will always be contentious because there's no way someone not in pain is ever really going to agree about toleratioon levels with someone who is in pain.  We willingly create the confusion,  and subsequently we create the hierarchical symtem of control over medications,  perhaps at the expense of good understanding of the patient experience.  No one person, no matter how well trained, should have deciding powers over another persons pain distress,  it should all be standardised and charted to minimise possible errors.  Currently,  it is vulnerable to the confirmation biases of the professionals.