I couldn’t do chores or hold the baby – even the doctors were fed up with me: my life with chronic pain
What started as an ache in my arms got so bad I had to stop driving and could barely work. Three years on, I am one of 3 million people in the UK living with pain that never goes away.
Pain is like a memory, a path reinforced every time we walk down it. As such, it’s quite possible that writing this is an act of self-harm. It’s not just that it hurts to write, although it does; it’s that when I started thinking about this piece, reading around it, even jotting down notes, I felt the pain in my forearms flare up again, and for a month or two I considered calling it off. My physiotherapist would call that “avoidance”. I would call it “learning from experience”, given that it was writing that got me here in the first place.
It was late in the summer of 2020 when I started to develop an aching in my forearms: first the left, and a few days later, the right; a vague, untroubling pain, similar to the after-effects of a workout. I figured, like any reasonable person, that my arms were just tired. I had been typing late into the evenings finishing a book proposal, which, on top of everything else – household jobs, phone usage, the cliched pandemic sourdough baking habit – was taking its toll. (Honestly, have you ever considered just how much you use your hands?)
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At Pain Spa, Dr Krishna is highly experienced in managing patients with chronic pain, with a focus on a holistic approach to pain management. Please contact us for further details if you are interested in having a consultation with Dr Krishna.