What’s Happened

In March 2022 I started to experience severe pain in my lower right side. It would go away once in awhile, until it didn’t. Since April 2022, I have been dealing with chronic pain. What that means is that pain in my side never goes away and, to make life interesting, sometimes it gets worse. That usually happens when I do too much in a day and it can make it so I can’t do anything for a week after.

My diagnosis? After seeing too many “ologists” to count, my diagnosis is pain. For whatever reason, my central nervous system has become over reactive to small amounts of pain that most people have every day and would never know. This has been frustrating as it doesn’t really tell me or anyone else what is actually wrong and until you experience something like it it’s hard to understand. It’s affected all aspects of my life and it’s really hard to keep moving forward sometimes. It was a struggle to graduate high school, but I did it. It is hard to doing the things I love like riding my horse, but I still do it. It’s a challenge to work a “regular” job, so now I’m figuring out what that looks like too.

Moving Forward

I need to move forward in my life and work in a realistic and meaningful way, I realized I was doing things I loved every day to help distract myself from my pain. My painting and working with my animals have inspired me to start my own business – Custom Critter Creations. This allows me to set my own hours, take a day off if the pain is bad, be generally flexible, and still do something that brings me joy.

Thank you for your support and taking the time to read my story! If you’d like an idea of what it means to deal with chronic pain, check out Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino.

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