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Pain. One that will not let you fall asleep and will not pass away. Sometimes it lasts for days, weeks, even years. Is it a blessing or a curse? How to live with him when there is a lack of strength or medicine seems to be failing?
According to doctors, pain is a signal to protect the body from danger. This is a sign that something is wrong and you need to take emergency action. However, it is difficult to enjoy it when the pain becomes unbearable.
Anna’s story
From headache to transplant
Anna is 35 years old. He’s known pain for a decade. When he seriously entered her life, she remembered the pictures from her childhood. Her mom is lying on the carpet with a cold compress on her forehead, the curtains are drawn in the room and the house is silent. “My mother has a headache,” she heard her father say.
The first pain appeared in her life right after her promotion. Then she became an editor in a large publishing house and worked several hours a day. “I’ll rest in a few years,” she told herself as she resumed her responsibilities. One Sunday she just didn’t get out of bed. She woke up and immediately wanted to sleep again. She hadn’t known such a headache yet. Pulsating above the right eye, excruciating. There was no question of work.
Diagnosis: renal failure
Migraines grew worse and appeared almost regularly. She tried many things: herbs, ginger teas, drops. She just didn’t want to accept the injections, she was afraid of the needles. When she woke up with a migraine in the morning, her husband couldn’t even make himself a cup of coffee. The slightest smells disturbed Annie.
One day, however, she woke up with swollen ankles at her feet. Three days later, she landed in the ER with maximum pressure. The doctor was a nephrologist. He quickly made a diagnosis – end-stage renal failure. – It’s a mistake! – she defended herself. – I’m fine, I’ve always been a low-pressure man. A year later, Anna was on dialysis.
New life
When asked by the hospital psychologist, who was one of the doctors qualifying her for a kidney transplant, if she found any pluses in the disease, she replied without hesitation: “The migraines stopped during dialysis. I haven’t had a headache in two years.
You can see the glass half empty or full. From the time of her illness, Anna only saw the latter. An organ transplant was what she understood as the best method of renal replacement therapy, another operation after it, with surgeons correcting her ureteral patency as something she had to go through for everything to work well. No hysteria, no dilemmas. Did her hair fall out from immunosuppressive steroids? – It’s difficult, they will grow back, you only need to change the drugs – she said.
The disease made Anna reevaluate the world and forgot about her career. Two years after the transplant, the kidney returned to full strength. He works in a small company where no one is racing with anyone.
What about headaches? – They came back six months after the transplant. Suddenly, in the middle of the week. Weaker, shorter ones usually appear when the weather changes or when I get stressed a lot. This is a signal that I need to slow down. I got neurological examinations. In my case, migraine is a hereditary issue. It can be intensified by many things, but fortunately I know my body, I can read signals.
Wanda’s story
I will not become an invalid
– When a XNUMX-year-old girl starts to have a backache, she should check her ID card and make sure that they have the right to do so – Wanda used to say. Only the pain grew more and more painful with time. It radiated from the back to the hip and leg, making walking difficult. There is probably no way to do without a doctor – she concluded after a six-month struggle. Before she did an X-ray of the spine, then an MRI, she went to a neurologist, orthopedist, and finally a surgeon – another six months passed. By this time, she had learned the taste of all over-the-counter pain medications.
When she heard from three doctors that she would need surgery because the disc between the two lower vertebrae in the spine was about to disappear, she felt it like a sentence. – There is no speech, I can handle it somehow. I will not get cut, I will not become an invalid – she cried in the waiting room, then asked for a prescription for stronger drugs.
Get away from the black bears
She chose to have surgery for two reasons. Firstly, she was forced to do so by her children and grandson, whom she could not even take in her arms, and secondly, she was fed up with black bears. And these always fell on her in the narcotic dreams she had after taking a dose of tramal. She was afraid that she was starting to go crazy. “I can’t stand it anymore,” she cried in front of another doctor’s office. And then she heard from one of the women about a clinic in Bydgoszcz, a state hospital in which they use modern operating methods.
The following week, she reported to a pain treatment clinic in Bydgoszcz. She looked the doctor in the eye and believed that it would be fine. She signed up on the waiting list. In the spring of the following year, she showed up for surgery in a military hospital in Bydgoszcz. Lots of examinations were done on her again, her spine was X-rayed. The attending physician showed what the implant, which he is going to insert between the vertebrae, looks like. – You must know that any operation is a risk. It doesn’t always work, he warned before she signed her consent to the procedure. Wanda just nodded. “I can’t do that anymore, Doctor, I have to try,” she replied.
When she woke up from the operation, she couldn’t feel her legs. Hours later, at the doctor’s orders, she began to wiggle her toes.
After the surgery, I got younger
She left the hospital five days after surgery. On my own. She bought painkillers and promised herself that the last one she was taking in such doses. She hung the doctor’s remarks on the wall, next to the physiotherapist’s recommendation and drawings with exercises. Two weeks later, her stitches were removed and she fell asleep without a painkiller for the first time in years. As a thank you, she quit smoking after 20 years of compulsive puffing. – I had such an agreement with God that if all goes well, I will try to live healthier. Apparently I am not meant to leave this world yet – says Wanda through tears of emotion.
She goes for long walks every day, she bought a steam pot and planted a lot of lettuce in her garden. – Now I’m going to the dentist and on a slimming holiday. Since I’m not smoking, I’ve put on a few pounds, and my doctor says it’s terrible for my spine. I cannot waste his work and my life – he says, and then shows the photo album. She stands on one of them with her husband and grandson. Hunched, no smile in her eyes. In the photos from a few years ago, it is older than in the photos taken a few weeks ago. – A suffering person ages faster. After the surgery, I was rejuvenated not only with my spirit – he laughs.
Michael’s story
Learn on your mistakes
Thirty-three-year-old. Handsome, intelligent, successful with women. – Sometimes I am surprised at them. I have the face of a forty-year-old, lines on my forehead. I look like a grandfather next to my peers – he says.
It started in childhood. He remembers scratching itchy spots to his blood. Mom used to go with him from doctor to doctor. They wrote ointments and said it was a protein blemish. Although he removed white cheese from his menu, the “lichen” did not disappear. He walked around with scabs on his body.
AZS – like a volleyball team
No friend of his knew as many doctors as he did. Finally, he found the right specialist. – What is AD? Sounds like a volleyball team. I don’t want to have it anymore – he was hysterical then. As a consolation, the dermatologist told him that atopic dermatitis wears off or is losing strength. He was the latter.
First he went to a hospital in Szczecin, then to a sanatorium in Kołobrzeg. He had normal lessons, but without any stress or glances. They were all the same. It was there that he learned how to tame the disease. – Then I saw that it was up to me if it would get better. I guess I also started to mature slowly – admits Michał.
A few years later, skin cleansing preparations appeared on the Polish market, better and milder steroid ointments, without steroids. Michał also learned what his body cannot tolerate. – Chocolate, olives, seasonal fruits have gone to the corner. Stress energizes the psyche, and it is immediately visible on the skin. Psychosomatics – says Michał. Did he go to psychology because of atopy? – I think thanks to her – he laughs.
Break the vicious circle
Michał’s girlfriend claims that living with an atopic is not much different from that with an ordinary guy. – Every man has some things that affect his ego. Sometimes Michał gets upset that he has to use so many “liniments”. He also cannot invite me to dinner with wine, to a Chinese restaurant, because his skin does not like alcohol and spicy dishes. But he is direct and honest. He can talk. He does not hide the disease. Maybe he needs more hugs sometimes – he laughs.
Michał, on the other hand, talks for a long time about the effect of a vicious circle in life. What if he didn’t get sick, would he be worse, better? Does he need a lot of tenderness from his heart, or is it an ego patch?
What about the vicious cycle of treating atopy: itching, irritation, scratching, infection? – I know that perfectly well. Chronic disease forces you to learn from mistakes, he concludes.
Anna Niewiadomska
Source: Let’s live longer