Since September last year, my life has been a whirlwind of things going on. Not least, losing a beloved family member on Christmas day, for my own Mother to then die very suddenly and unexpectedly on January 10th 2012, a mere month away from the second anniversary of my Father's death - which was yesterday, February 4th.
In the meantime, my arthritis has been fairly placid, until recently. I'm struggling very badly with my hands at the moment, more specifically the joints at the very ends of my fingers on both hands, although my right is considerably worse than my left.
It means even doing this small amount of typing is painful beyond belief and I've had to pass the task over to my partner - Impossible to explain to people though. But before this, I was already cataloguing how my did my arthritis hit with a flare? Was there a definite pattern that perhaps I could begin to see, and therefore try and do things to help in the future.
All I can say with certainty is that stress and lack of sleep are absolutes when it comes to struggling with pain management, as the last month has clearly shown me. I knew that already, and somehow I've had to keep going because frankly, no-one else can do the legal paperwork and notifications that my sister and I have had to do - not just on my Mother's estate, but my Aunt's as well (the death on Christmas day). It does become a catch 22 situation with pain, but fortunately because I'd already got a lot of different methods in place to help long before today, it did help. No, it didn't stop it from occurring, but at least I was able to minimise the impact compared to years ago before I knew what I was facing.
This sort of brings me to my next item. My flare ups or new events. I tend to place a flare up in a separate category to a more specific event, like my joints in the tops of my fingers. The reason being a flare up tends to happen on a regular basis, and tends to follow a very specific pattern. I get area's of heat and swelling around local joints, that I find I then need to place ice packs on to help. Sometimes pain levels are worse than others, but rarely does a flare up last more than a few hours. It does usually happen at least once a day, more if, as mentioned, I'm tired or stressed. Weather patterns also affect flare ups. I know some will say a flare up a day is still too much, but when I tell you I was living almost constantly in a flare, with virtually no respite from it, then this is a vast improvement.
New or other events I classify that are different to a general day to day flare. As I've said, I'm struggling very badly at the moment with my hands. I've noticed when these sort of events occur, there is a very definite pattern as well - for me at least.
It'll start off with a very sharp pain right down in the affected joint. I can only liken it to have a red hot needle or sharp knife being driven in to the joint, and twisted around. It's a sharp, relentless pain. This can stay for several weeks (as is the case now for me) and slowly it'll begin to dissipate, and be replaced with a much duller throbbing pain, and a much greater stiffness around the joints that have been affected. I am sort of hovering around that area now, whereby the sharp pain is still there, but on occasion it's been replaced by the duller throbbing pain and stiffness.
This currently new event for me has made using a pen near enough impossible - and I've had to give my food to my partner to literally cut up for me, because I can't put any real pressure on the fingers to push down on either a knife or fork. I can only hope it'll ease soon.
In the meantime, my partner is pretty much doing all my typing and writing at the moment - just as well with all the paperwork we've had to fill out with the deaths that have occurred.
It's never easy to have to relinquish control to anyone, but right now, my body isn't giving me a lot of choice in the matter. I can only hope it improves sooner rather than later.
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