When I posted recently on Instagram about throwing my back out and putting my flare-up plan in place my thoughts halted. What do we even mean by flare-up? It’s a phrase used so often but do people really understand what it means? And what the heck is a “flare-up plan”?! Let’s dive in …
My pain management programme defined a flare-up as being your usual pain, with the volume turned up to the maximum - not new pains or signs of a new injury.
Read MoreGiven how overwhelming pacing can be to tackle I have broken it down into four key elements: WHAT it is, WHY it is so important, HOW we can do it, and WHEN we should be doing it
Taking it step by step, this will hopefully demystify the process somewhat and make it easier for you to see which of the areas you need to tackle - it may be just one key element that’s missing or you may need a review of all of them, it’s all okay, you start where you need to.
Read MoreIt took until I was in my late teens or early twenties before the concept of a ‘boom and bust’ cycle became part of the pacing vocabulary, and although the idea was talked about theoretically that doing too much led to me doing too little, all that really amounted to was trying to make sure I didn’t fall into the trap of doing absolutely nothing on recovery days. Ideas such as baselines were still not in the picture and I was still clueless about pacing my actual activities.
In all I probably spent about fifteen years trying to figure out pacing on my own: no small ask!
Read MoreIt hit me hardest during my first week of self-isolation. The sudden realisation that when all this is over and some sort of “normal” life resumes, people will be back out there, going to work, socialising and filling their days again. As things currently stand though, this is my normal. And I’m really lucky – I’m pretty mobile these days, actively job-hunting and looking forward to changes that will soon see me less housebound. But that day the weight of the realisation that this is actually all pretty standard for me was crushing.
Read MoreWhat actually prompted this post is the fact that a few weekends ago, I ran out of two of my pain meds. I messed up and so did my GP in changing the quantities I was prescribed, which unfortunately I didn’t catch in time. I had 3-4 days of withdrawal effects as I was essentially going cold turkey – never, ever, ever recommended. It took the better part of a week to get back to ‘normal’; however one thing I did note was that I had absolutely no increase in pain levels.
Read MoreI’ve been working on a post about pain gates and the neuropathy of pain for a little while now but it’s been a bit of a unwieldy subject to try and grapple with! However, watching last weeks Horizon, The Placebo Experiment: Can My Brain Cure My Body reinforced that it’s something I really want to address.
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