Sort of funny. In the middle of a nasty wind storm here, which means the temperatures have bottomed out, and once again I don’t have steady internet access – or power. (This makes the second time in a week I’ve lost ‘net access; really wish they’d do something about that on a level above “repair lines when they go crashboom”.) The loss of power was relatively short-termed; just long enough to do a bit of light cleaning/cat maintenance in the dusk.
The real pain has been literal – the cold has caused the CRPS to act up, and I can barely flex my left thumb/forefinger, and moving my right arm is, in general, A Very Bad Idea. Besides just general stiffness, there’s a lot of pain… MSNBC has a good article on pain up right now, and living with it – or struggling with it, anyhow. Certainly hits home a lot of how I feel – I think the one thing it missed was that the constant level of high pain is exhausting, and all I want to do when it gets this bad is sleep. Thankfully, laying under the electric blanket gives some measure of relief (although it’s not terribly practical for most of the things I’ve needed to get done); not so convenient or relieving without power, granted.
The most frustrating thing about it is the little voice in the back of my head that wants to laugh and say “see, you had two really good days – you had fun, felt connected to people, and were generally just enjoying life – now you have to pay the price for that”; as though there’s something wrong with me that I don’t deserve the fun, and if I have any, something bad has to happen in payment. Then again, looking at the last 18 months of my life, it might be understandable to see how I’ve been conditioned to think this. I don’t get to have nice things, apparently. At least, that’s how it feels – something good must always be balanced out by something bad, or worse.
Maybe “strong dissociation from logic” should be another culprit to chronic pain.
Power is flickering again – should probably post this and go find the lanterns so I can at least read and have some measure of productivity.
Of course we blame ourselves for illness, more so for chronic illness for which we cannot “find” a cause. And if we stigmatize ourselves like this, just imagine how we stigmatize others . . .