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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Accupuncture Is The Latest Suggestion From My Doctor

At a recent visit to my doctor in June, she thought maybe trying something such as accupuncture of cupping might be an alternative. I don't know much about either of them, but am open to anything that will help. Anyone tried either of these for pelvic pain relief? Feel free to leave a message if you have tried or experienced any success with either of these. Thanks!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Popular Proven Chronic Pain Solutions, Available in Ebook Form For Instant Access

Living with chronic pain is not something anyone would want to experience. I have lived with it for 4 years and have tried some of the techniques and solutions that the professionals have to offer in the form of Ebooks. Here are a few of the Ebooks I suggest you look at to help relieve at least in part the chronic pain.

This one is 11 Chronic Pain Ebooks. To read more about it, Click Here!

Next is one called Natural Healing Health, The Cure for Chronic Pain. For more on this Ebook, Click Here!

Is it chronic pain that you are suffering? This is an interesting site called Natural Back Pain Solution. To read more about this one Click Here!

For some time, the doctors tried to help me by treating my chronic pelvic pain as if it were fibromyalgia. In fact, I continue to take Lyrica which does seem to help just a bit. This is a 40 day home treatment that has proven to totally heal fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. You can look at this Ebook that has 2 extra bonuses with it Click Here! This includes a 10 question survey to help evaluate your condition.

I know that anything I find that gives me any kind of relief is worth the money and time I put into it. Feel free to leave comments about anything you try that is a success at helping with your chronic pain!

Friday, May 13, 2011

What Everyday Life Is Like With Chronic Pain

If you've never experienced chronic pain, it is something that I would not wish on anyone. The only time I have relief from pain is when I'm sleeping. Other than that, I have pain every minute I am awake. I do take pain pills, but they are not strong enough to do much good. And I am unable to take over 6 pain pills a day, because my stomach is unable to handle more than that.
It has altered my life tenfold. I used to be a hard working, always on the move, strong woman that rarely spent time just sitting around doing nothing. I am no longer able to travel long distances without taking a rest at least every hour or two, so seeing family and friends that I love to visit is no longer an option. The economy and being on a fixed income makes it impossible to travel by staying in motels for 2-3 nights to get to a destination where friends and family are.
I also am unable to lift anything over probably 10-15 pounds, because if I do, it makes the pain totally miserable for the rest of the day. Even carrying in a case of bottled water makes me miserable the rest of the day if I have to carry it in after a trip to the grocery store.
Cleaning my kitchen floor on my hands and knees the way I used to do it is something else that I'm unable to do either. It creates a misery, and the days I did do that was a day that I am unable to do much the rest of the day other than complain about how miserable I am.
When you have chronic pain, and in my case where the doctors have spent 4 years trying to find the cause and so far have been unable to, it is difficult to know what makes it more unbearable until you try something. I used to lift heavy things, clean floors by hand, rake the garden, all things that now considerably increase the pain.
These are just a few of the things that I deal with on an everyday basis. I'm still looking for answers or suggestions as to what could be causing the pain, and am open to trying anything that someone has done to help, or thinks could help. Will continue to give updates as doctors keep trying to decide what it is that might help in some way.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Thank you for reading my story. I am a 46 year old female that had a wonderful life, just about everything a person could want. Happily married for over 15 years, a small peaceful acreage in the beautiful Iowa country, my health was great, I thought I had it all. Then in 2007 we had a roll-over car accident on New Years morning while heading to an auction. It had snowed just a bit that night, and just enough to make the roads icy. Not knowing the roads were icy. we headed down our gravel road and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. When we got onto the asphalt road we had gone no more than about 50 feet when I told my husband "wow, this is icy!" But it was too late. We started fishtailing and ended up rolling over twice and landed right side up on a small embankment.

Things didn't seem too terrible, we were both in a minimal amount of pain, but didn't seem like anything major, not even enough to visit the Emergency Room. That night when I went to brush my teeth, I told my husband that when I bent over the sink to rinse my mouth out I felt a "shock" that went down the front of my body. Didn't really think anything still other than maybe I had pinched a nerve or something.  A couple weeks went by and we both still felt a bit sore, so we went and had x-rays done of our backs, but everything was negative, so figured we would be fine with a bit more time. And did--for awhile.

I continued to feel the "shock or tingle" whenever I brushed my teeth, but really nothing more than that until around August that year. Then I started having to urinate quite frequently, only a bit more often at first, but as the days went by, it got to the point eventually that I would sit no more than 15 minutes and have to go so bad, it was very uncomfortable. And I wouldn't even go much, but felt relief just getting up to try. It got so irritating that I decided I should go see the doctor, thinking that I probably had a bladder infection.

So, I did that, but everything came back negative again. So for a few more weeks I just lived with it. But when it never got better I returned to the doctor. So, after having several tests done and another month or so going by, finally they thought that I had endemetriosis and a cyst on my ovary that was causing all the pain. So they thought if we waited a few more weeks, the cyst would eventually go away along with the pain and if not they would remove the ovary.

So in January of 2008 they decided it would probably not go away unless they removed the ovary and so I chose to have my ovary removed. For the first couple of days after that, I was on pain medication so really pay attention as to if my problem was solved or not. A couple of days later, I got a call from the doctor that did the surgery. He apologized for not having me make an appointment, but informed me that he had gotten the results back from the ovary they removed, and that I had cancer, granulosa cell tumor. Wow, complete devistation, but is a whole other story which I may share on another page.

In February of 2008, they did a radical hysterectomy to remove everything. How relieved I was when the results finally came back about 3 weeks later that they found absolutely no further cancer, and I was not going to have to do radiation or chemotherapy!! And my pain was gone as well!!

Not so lucky. Having been doing nothing but recooperating from the surgery for the next couple weeks after my surgery, I hadn't done any activity, pretty much just layed on the couch and slept. Then after about a month having gone by after the surgery, I told my husband that I thought the "pain" or "shock" feeling seemed to be returning, just a little bit. He said and I agreed with him that it had to just be phantom pain or just thinking that it was back, because everything was gone.

Within about another month, the pain and frequent urination had returned. And it was just as bad if not worse than it was before the first surgery. I couldn't believe it, and the doctors were stunned as well. They decided to send me to a urogynocologist to see if maybe my bladder was causing the problem. I went to her for many months and visits (and several very UNCOMFORTABLE tests and procedures) and she eventually said that she had ruled out everything she could think of and that she would no longer be of help to me, that maybe I should see a pelvic pain specialist, also gave me the name of a specialist in Chicago to try.

One of the worst things about it is the difficulty to describe the pain. I've used phrases like a tingling, stabbing, vibrating, irritating, just completely miserable feeling "down there". It is difficult to pinpoint and direct doctors to the exact spot that causes me such misery.

Recently (about a month ago) my doctor went over everything with me again and when I told her that shortly after the accident when I had seen the doctor back then that he x-rayed my back, but not my neck, she decided that we should have an MRI done on my neck. So, I did have one and they found what is called Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy between discs 5 and 6 in my spine by the neck. Not sure I have all the medical terms perfect, but this was a "bruise" between C5-C6 on my spine caused by a number of things, but could have been from prior injury---i.e. my car accident? My doctor also found more information about this on a professional doctor's website (Up-to-date I believe), but it stated that possible problems (up to 20%) of people with this have "clinical bladder disfunction". Well, I'm not a doctor, but I would say that would be me?! So, she sent me to a Neurologist, but he basically laughed me out of his office. He said that I should see a gynocologist if my main complaint was pelvic pain, not a neurologist. We really had thought and hoped that this was the answer, but unless we find a neurologist that believes they are connected, then I will never be without pain.

Well, it's been over 4 years since the accident, 3 years since the cancer was found and having done everything that the doctors have asked me to do and I am still living daily with the pain, taking pain pills on a regular daily basis, and unable to do the things a 46 year old female should be able to do without misery, pain and total discomfort.

It is very painful to sit at the computer for more than about 20 minutes without having to get up and walk around to get a slight break from the misery, riding in the car is the same way which makes taking trips out of town for fun or to visit family or friends near impossible. Cleaning the kitchen floor triggers a day full of misery, and if I lift something that is a bit heavy, then the rest of the day is almost unbearable. The ONLY thing that relieves it and only if it is not already out of control that day is to lay down for awhile.
Before all this, I was a full time working supervisor at a mail transport equipment center. I worked up to 60 hours in a week, constantly on the go, a work horse if you will. I was not afraid to work, and worked hard to achieve success.

So, what's next for me? How do I keep going like this? Will they ever find out what's wrong? Well that is why I have decided to share my story. I have never written about my life, have never set up a website or a blog, and until recently never even knew there were such things like this to get my story out in hopes of finding some answers!
 

There are 2 reasons that I have decided to share this story. My number one reason is hoping that someone out there has gone through something like this (hopefully has been cured) and can offer some advice and the second reason is to hopefully learn ways to generate income online to help with all the medical bills that I have accrued through all this.  So, please overlook what might be a "rookie" looking page, as this is the first time I have ever tried to do anything like this. Fortunately I was approved for Social Security Disability, and was approved without the help of a lawyer the first time I applied, so thank goodness for at least that part.

I think what gets me through each day is the fact that even though I live with chronic pelvic pain every day, if I had not complained, I would probably not be here today because the cancer inside my ovary would have burst some day and it probably would have been a very different outcome. So no matter how embarrassing it would be to have to tell a doctor about what is wrong with your body, don't let it go as it may be something way more serious than you could imagine.

My doctor is really unsure where to go from here. She even suggested that I write a letter to the TV show "The Doctors" to get some answers. She thought maybe even trying accupuncture or some type of alternative medicine to get some type of relief. It's a journey of ups and downs for sure, hoping that something may work, then finding out that nothing is giving any relief.

I will continue to update anyone that has interest in my story with regular posts from things that my doctor continues to ask me to do, along with any advice that someone might share with me through this post.

I would like to invite anyone whether you are experiencing a similar situation or you are on disability, or just visiting my blog to visit my new website called Marla'sHangout. I am going to try and put as many "free" things on my site as I can. One of the sites is BetterWebBuilder. This is a great site, you don't have to pay anything unless you choose to, and you get over $100 worth of tools, features and services a month to promote your website or to be an affiliate for their product. Check it out, I believe you will be pleasantly surprised at the amount of extra money you could make with this product. And I'll continue to add other free things as I find them.