This is one of the sets of exercises I'm supposed to do in between therapy sessions. A nearly flattened beach ball is enough to take head weight off while slowly turning my head from side to side and holding for a 30 count. I'm commanded NOT to push into pain. I'm horrible for powering through because my whole life has been such high pain. I'm really liking my hair getting long again, just noticed that.
This next one is since my jaw hasn't been moving in track (think knee, joint out of track) for so long, I'm supposed to practice slowly opening and closing with my tongue on the roof of my mouth as a guide to keep the movement straight. I can't believe how hairy my nose is. +_+
I've gotten pix fresh out of therapy a couple of times, but I'm not going to share them. My face swells up and I look pretty rough for 1-2 days. Short of actually bruising (which I did the first week, which is normal in ASTYM therapy where you shred fascia for muscle release and reheal, which improves blood flow and lowers inflammation), I look like I'm having some kind of anaphylactic reaction but it's just my tissues hyper reacting to pressure points and deep tissue work.
You hear that it takes so many muscles to smile vs frown and stuff, but you truly have no idea how many teeny weeny muscles are all over your face and inside your jawline until you've had them massaged. Everything from the back of my skull up to temples is involved with my jaw and that isn't including fibro flare reactions that refer all around and further down my neck, back, and collarbone.
At this point the goal is to get as much work done as we can in time allotted without causing more hyper reaction setbacks than I can handle. I've never had so much pain associated nausea in physical therapy in the 11 years I've been going for problems all over my body because of that car wreck. I was told on day one that working around jaw and back of skull can set off migraines, they weren't kidding.
In the meantime I'm having flashbacks galore of the accident, which has been a little overwhelming. On top of that, the pain spikes have been triggering rapid switching and even sharing overlays with my fragment mes (I'm psychologically dissociated) and it's getting really obvious now we're not sure who is running what in my body. A number of times in this last month I've caught my right hand responding to keyboard more like a random child whacking any old key both in gaming and typing somewhere, finally hit me two of me are operating together (a first!!!) and the one running right hand either isn't able to hand eye coordinate like this or is too young to and has never done this before. It's not consistent, so it's not a real nerve problem or anything, just suddenly really random sloppy clicking something wrong in gaming with the mouse and then all kinds of frustration crab inside my head yelling to pay attention, LOOK at what I'm doing, and I'm all like.... I've been playing this game for 18 months and never had this much of a problem before even when I realize we've been taking turns. It's mostly noticeable that one of me is impatient and will go to any lengths draining the bank without strategizing timer countdowns, and another me comes up from behind cleaning up that mess and getting everything back in order. But this two of me running a keyboard and mouse at the same time is getting interesting.
As you can imagine, it's not taking much to wear me out while this has been going on, and I'm starting 3rd month now. I'm not sure if we'll be extending again or not, depends on insurance and how I assess at the end of this round.
All the same, kiddos are coming over later and I'm set up for us to make homemade ice cream. Metering out pain med as slowly as I can to make them last as long as possible. In the old days doctors had me on handfuls of vicodin, skelaxin, librax, naproxen, and even more than that, lived a bit drunk on meds for years till I figured out none of that was working. Got cleaned off and I've been having my current primary strictly monitor and count out pills. I'm allowed just enough low level xanax to keep mood more even (pain is outrageous on mood) because nothing else seems to work for me without weird consequences, and one tramadol a day, which I break in half and try to stick to just half a day when I need it most. Med addiction sucks, never want to wind up there again. I can stretch a week's worth of pain meds for most people over a month and sometimes even two, so I feel like I'm handling all this really well.
Looking forward to that ice cream. Chewing has been rough.
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