It seems counterintuitive to think that when it feels incredibly painful to move that the solution is to get up and move anyway. Thanks to some advice I got years ago, I’m reminded that “motion is lotion”. I’m not sure if she originated the hashtag #motionislotion but I first saw it years ago from @hurtblogger and I’ve found it to be true. Today I am two days away from my next round of Rituxan and I feel it. It burns. It stings. My knees are throbbing.
This is the kind of day when I tying my shoes and pulling up my pants creates excruciating pain through the joints in my fingers.
My ankle doesn’t want to turn enough to get my foot through my underwear. Now if that’s not enough to spark depression. My feet are stiff and aching so I move at the pace of an injured sloth. Yes, unfortunately today my spirit animal is the sloth. As I type this my fingers say, “STOP!” Why am I not using my dictation software? This body says curl up on the couch and cry so I did that. I did that for a while but it didn’t get any better. Heating pads and resting are not doing their usual repair work on my pain levels. Low dose pain killers are all I have medicine-wise and they are not making any difference AT ALL!
I didn’t feel this bad last week at work so why do I feel so much worse this weekend? Is it that I’m so close to my next infusion and I had to miss two doses of methotrexate because I was sick? Is it that I’m not distracted enough? Maybe it’s a combination. When I’m at work teaching I have constant problems swirling around in my head and I can mentally minimize my pain by not focusing so much on it. Even concentrating on writing this blog lessens my pain. Now there are days when mentally lessening pain just does not work. What I do find though is when I’m lounging more, I hurt more. Is the key to just keep moving? I’ll put this to the test.
Here is my plan:
Step 1: Put on comfortable athletic clothes and comfortable shoes. There’s something about changing out of comfy sweats to my stretchy yoga pants and sneakers that directs me into active mode.
Step 2: Choose an attainable goal. Don’t commit to something out of reach. I don’t want to start out on a 5 mile trail and have no way out should I not be able to get through this so I decide to take the dog around my neighborhood as a starting point. I can always go around multiple times but I have a way out after a mile.
Step 3: See how I feel. Have lots of checkpoints to assess whether to do more or take a break.
Step 4: Stay hydrated.
Did I mention how utterly count
erintuitive this feels? Tearing up from pain while I tie my shoes, I see that my dog Apollo has already seen me put on one sneaker and received the signal that sneakers mean he has a good chance of going for a walk. Now there’s no going back. I can’t disappoint him. Gripping the leash for any length of time proves to be too much, so I’m forced to hand over that job to hubby. We round the first corner of the neighborhood at a less than desirable pace but I still feel a sense of accomplishment. Thirty minutes later we are back at the house and I do feel better. I got my adrenaline going and released some stress I felt from pain. Never underestimate the power of adrenaline. I even feel like I can do yardwork. Just keep moving…just keep moving…
Three
bags of leaves later I check my Fitbit stats and although my steps aren’t close to what they could be when I’m on my feet all day teaching, I’m impressed. I know what it took to get these and that’s all that matters. I realize that my legs feel pretty darn good. Continuous squats to pick up leaves is tolerable on my knees but gripping the 
lightweight leaves is becoming too much to handle. I have to remind myself at this point not to overdo it so I take frequent breaks. After one more round at weed-pulling, raking, and bagging, I call it quits. For the average person, this would be nothing to write about. For someone like me with chronic pain from Rheumatoid Arthritis, it’s everything.