- It's hard, 'cause you want people to understand,
but you feel like people just sometimes don't understand
chronic pain means chronic.
I'm just sick of having to cancel stuff.
Hi, I'm Lara, and I have something called endometriosis.
Having something that never goes away
is a really hard concept to grasp,
even for someone who is living with it.
The extra steps that I have to take every single day
just to be comfortable and just
to exist in a way that's comfortable for me
is something that I wish the average person
understood a little better.
I decided to kind of detail what a week
in my life, living with endometriosis is actually like.
It's Saturday, and I woke up at 5:48 am in pain,
which I know because I immediately looked
at my phone to figure out what time it was.
I was supposed to go hiking with friends,
but as soon as I woke up, I knew
that there was pretty much no way
I was even getting out of bed.
It was one of those days where I could tell the pain was
about to get really, really bad,
to the point where I probably wouldn't
be able to walk later, and since I had just recently gotten
back from the week vacation,
I had no food in my house.
One of the problems with my endometriosis is
that I have a lot of trouble with my diet.
There are only certain things I can eat
without causing an intense flare
that lasts for days, so with the last couple of months
of my life, I've been trying really hard
to stick to a deity that's pretty much
as anti-inflammatory as possible.
So when I woke up at 5:48 am
in that amount of pain, I knew I had to think quickly,
so I dragged myself out of bed,
got myself in my car with all of my might,
and immediately went to the grocery store.
As soon as I got home from the grocery store,
I immediately got high.
Weed is the only thing that even remotely touches my pain,
and it's not that it makes my pain go away,
it's that I makes it tolerable enough
for me to be able to just fall
into a comatose state and just forget
about it for a few hours.
You can see my handy dandy little weed grinder.
This is an Indica, I use Indica a lot, Indica strain,
because it's a body high, and this is my handy dandy
little pipe that I will put it in to smoke.
After smoking, I sat on the couch like a zombie
for the next nine hours.
It's now Sunday.
I wake up with less pain,
but still in a considerable amount of pain,
so I make a decision to go
see my acupuncturist that morning.
I see my acupuncturist at least two times a week
on top of seeing my physical therapist and my chiropractor.
After acupuncture, I had a little bit of relief,
but I was still so emotionally and physically exhausted
from spending the entire before
in a state of just constant pain.
All I could think about was how many times I've had
to go through this in my life,
and before I know it, I was in a very dark place,
feeling very depressed.
I'm lucky to have a very good therapist
who actually has chronic pain herself,
so it's very easy to talk to her on days like this.
I knew that if I didn't go talk to someone about it,
I wouldn't continue to spiral more.
After a solid hour straight of sobbing
on her couch about how many days I've lost
to being in pain, I went home, got high again
until I could fall asleep.
By Monday morning I was so anxious
to get out of my apartment and talk to people
that I woke up at 5:45 am.
I had some lower back pain, but compared
to the levels on Saturday and Sunday,
it was like a breath of fresh air,
so I decided to take my dog on a hike.
That's the thing about chronic pain
that I wish more people would understand though,
is that one day you can see me
on the couch unable to move for eight plus hours
at a time, and two days later I can
be walking up a mountain.
It doesn't mean that I don't have pain.
It doesn't mean that my pain isn't real,
it just means that like everything in life,
it varies from day to day, and after
over a decade of dealing with this,
I've kind of figured it out for the most part.
I'm getting ready for work, so I'm packing up my CBD stuff
so I can take with me, this is a rub
that I put on my abdomen, lower back throughout the day,
and then this is an actual, vaginal suppository,
which helps a lot with my pelvic pain.
I obviously have to go into the bathroom for that one,
but they're both going into my work bag
because today is not a good pain day already,
but I already missed two days of work this week,
so I don't have much of a choice.
Once I finally got to work, I sat through a lot of meetings,
but by four pm my abdomen hurt so badly
that all I could think about was getting home.
I just got home from work maybe 15 minutes ago,
immediately put on my pajamas,
putting my rice-filled heating pack in the microwave
and smoking immediately, because my body hurts so bad.
The last two hours of work, literally,
all I could think about was getting home
and doing this exact thing.
It's like,
I probably should have just left early,
but on days like today, and when you constantly
taking sick days, you kind of have to figure out,
oh, should I take today off or should I wait
in case it's worse tomorrow?
Lately, the mornings seem to be the time
when my pain is the least.
Like I have the least amount of swelling.
I wake up and I'm feeling pretty good for the most part,
so I've been doing my best to take advantage of them,
so I went on another hike on Tuesday.
On Wednesday I chose to sleep in until seven am.
I put on the same stretchy, yoga pants
that I'd worn already twice that week,
because wearing jeans that aren't loose
and boyfriend cut or wearing anything
that's tight on my abdomen is just
not an option for me.
I went to see my acupuncturist first thing
in the morning second time that week.
I spent so much time at acupuncture today
because of my pain that I think it is permanently etched
onto my body from laying on the table.
I went directly to work after that
until around four pm, where once again,
the pain got so bad that all I could think
about was going home.
I cannot express to you enough how difficult it is
to think about anything else
when your body is in so much pain.
Today was one of those days where my pain was bad enough
to annoy the shit of me and make me really upset,
but not bad enough to actually stay home from work.
I am in my car, getting ready to go
to physical therapy for the second time this week.
It's gonna be good, I mean I don't really look forward
to coming to physical therapy.
It's not fun to be reminded that I'm sick for an hour
twice a week, but I know that it helps me
and I know that it'll be worth it in the end.
Pelvic floor physical therapy is another thing
that I try to do twice a week,
because I was already in a pretty aggressive amount of pain
that morning, we didn't do a lot of internal work.
Instead we focused on stretches
and other things to help alleviate some of my pain.
After physical therapy, I headed to work yet again.
As soon as five pm rolled around,
I went home and immediately put rubs and ointments
and heating pad all over my back and lower pelvic area.
It was a bad pain day, but it was Thursday night,
it was close to the weekend,
and I told myself if I can just get
through this then I'll have time to rest this weekend.
Friday morning I head to see my therapist,
my mental therapist, it was my second time this week,
but I am so lucky to be able to have a therapist
and not only just a therapist,
but someone who actually has chronic pain,
who understands it, who gets it in a way
that I think is so vital.
Dealing with pain every single day is the hardest thing
I've ever had to do, hands down.
And it's not just because my body hurst every day.
It's because of the mental repercussions.
It's because of thinking about all of the days
that I've had to lose to pain,
or all the people that I've had to cancel plans with
or all the things that I've had to miss out in my own life
because of something that I have no control over.
Even on my worst pain days, I will continue
to fight back in some way.
Even if it's barely a fist raised in the air,
the fight will still be there somewhere inside of me.
It's hard not to let these illnesses define me,
and it's hard not to feel like they have control
over my life, but instead of shying away from it,
instead of avoiding what it is,
I'm just choosing to embrace it.
I have endometriosis, and it sucks.
It really sucks, but it's not everything.
It's not all of me, it's not who I am.
It's just a part of me.
My life is more than just endometriosis,
and no matter how many bad pain days I have,
that won't change.
(soft music)