I don’t like the word chronic. It sounds bad enough, but it lacks urgency. I prefer the word intractable. I have intractable pain. As if it were an uneasy truce with hostilities threatening to break out at any minute.
My symptoms range from annoying (hello ear ringing) to overwhelming, but they are always there. Sometimes you fall into an easy routine with your symptoms. Like nausea in the morning or that my pain is going to be worse in the evening.
You learn to work around your few minutes of truce during the day. Most days, you can set a clock by it, with varying degrees of intensity. Then your symptoms break out with a surprise attack. Usually at a time or place that you didn’t see coming.
I have only woke up with a migraine once before this week. The last week or so, that has changed. This morning I was up at 03:00 AM MDT. By the time I got the migraine under control, it was time to wake up.
It’s almost like my migraine gremlins decided in a meeting that they have tried every avenue. Except for that gremlin in the back. He knows. How about insomnia? They have tried writhing in the chair in the evening. They tried needles on the head and then burning on the head. Insomnia, the final frontier, to boldly go were no migraine has gone before.
Pain is a strange mistress. We all suffer to some degree or fashion. No one’s suffering is greater than another because pain is pain. When you pretty much have continuous symptoms (I had other parts of my body messed up before this, dammit), you accept the rhythm of the pain. It may break out at any moment, but it was when and where you expected it. That isn’t chronic. That is intractable.
Remain Lost 