Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Activity Pacing

"Activity pacing" is what people with chronic pain are supposed to do.  You are supposed to do a little bit, rest, then a little bit more.  By doing this, activities are less painful and theoretically more can be accomplished.  I have not learned this lesson.

My model has always been work until completely exhausted and in pain.  If I feel good one day, I try to do as much as I can because I don't know how good I will feel the next day.  This puts me in a cycle in which I over do activities, need to rest a lot because I cannot move for a couple of days, then I start it again.

As I have gotten older, it is more and more difficult to push through the pain.  Take, for instance, my arms right now.  Both arms are swollen because I have tendinitis in both.  I wear wrist braces to keep me from overworking these tendons and muscles.  However, I still need to care for the house and the kids.  This means that I cannot rest the arms as much as I should.  So after a day of picking up in the house, laundry and light shopping, my arms ache.

I have started to go back to PT just for the arm issue.  Some of the pain has decreased, but I am still impatient.  You would think that I would learn that pacing myself really does pay off, but I am not that smart.  I pray today that I will learn my lesson, because I am in pain today.  I know I will really need to pray for tomorrow or the day after that to really get the hang of this.

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