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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Pain continued

It is Saturday night. I have had both of my hands in braces since yesterday evening,  and my right hand since two nights ago. They're helping. But my emotional well-being, I guess, is not getting better. I am frustrated by the braces; there are an amazing number of actions that require bending my wrists. In addition, they don't help enough. My wrists still hurt. My left hand is okay-ish. My right hand was killing me by the time I finished eating a bowl of ice cream. Because I was holding a spoon.

I am also starting to be extremely sensitive to sound, such that the dining hall on a Saturday night, which is always uncrowded and in general is less overwhelming than during the week, had me finding a place to sit in the farthest corner of the room, away from everyone. The noise levels were difficult to handle, and I avoided the crowds that were around a band on my way home.

I do not understand why I'm so sensitive to sound. I'm fairly used to working around it, but it becomes more difficult when I'm sick or hurting. Sensory input becomes extremely overwhelming even when I'm the person contributing to it (such as playing music on my computer). I also start avoiding crowds, and any kind of public gathering, even when said gathering is just my friends, which I'm usually okay with. It just gets to the point where everything is too much. And then I start getting lonely, and withdrawing more. I don't know how to stop it, except to start feeling better, which is not in my control. I can take steps to feel better, and it helps for a while, but at a certain point it's really up to my body to heal itself. And I hate feeling this way. I hate how easily pain seems to win, simply because it happens day after day. It just gets hard to fight, hard to ignore.

Pain is isolating. It overrides everything else, and can't be shared. It limits my mobility, and my ability to do a lot of different activities. Even if it didn't, when I'm feeling this way, I don't want to go anywhere. I want to stay home, curl up in my bed, and have someone hold me. I want a cat to curl up next to me and start purring. I want creature comfort, but don't want people intruding.

At this point I can't even think about school work. Everything I could do  requires using my hands in some way. Either using a pencil, or typing, or holding a book.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Shauna,

    I just love Michelle Obama's wig! don't you?

    Karen

    ReplyDelete