I Hate Being in Pain

Physical pain. It sucks.

I’ve been in pain now for about 12 days, and I’m finally past the worst of it. But now, instead of a single toothache, or even the bigger pain of the extraction site, I have a general pain that extends from my cheek bones all the way down. So, basically, 50% of my face just hurts. It’s annoying, and it makes me grumpy, but there’s more to it than that.

Normally, when I’m in pain, I’m good. The pain is usually high up front, and then just slightly inconvenient later. With the initial tooth ache, and now, these huge holes in my mouth, however, the pain has been constant, for about 12 days. I’ve become grumpy, and pretty snide, to boot. This makes me a terrible house mate, and try as I might, I can’t stop it completely. I mostly apologize a lot, and hope for forgiveness, which is graciously given all around. The Girl even goes out of her way to give me extra hugs, and offers to do things to make my day easier. She’s a tiny little blessing.

The worst part of facial pain for me though, is my ears. Any kind of facial pain, from a black eye, to a tooth extraction, makes my ears ring. Now, don’t get me wrong. My ears ring all the time, and have for years (yay for physical abuse!). But when I’m in pain, it’s hard to listen to anything else. All the sounds in my environment are too loud, from the chatter of the kids talking downstairs, to the sound of paper moving across Jenny’s desk. It makes me want to implode.

This makes it hard to work, because everyone else has to work in the same house. Homeschool, writing, you name it. I live with other people, and that doesn’t go away just because I’m in pain.

Sometimes, I can just focus on one sound, like my keyboard, and I can block out the rest. But, I can’t talk to people well, because as soon as I open my mind to the sounds of conversation, I start hearing everything. It can be overwhelming, and the more I think about it, the worse it gets, and the worse it gets, the more I think about it. Vicious cycles all the way around, these days.

The upside is, with all this extra sensory stuff going on, I have an easier time dropping my general anxiety. When I’m legitimately distressed, my body doesn’t make up new things, and I don’t have the energy to obsess over the current situation, so I’m good! It’s actually a relief, in its own way.

In other news, I saw my doctor yesterday, and because I’m responding well to the current dose of Zoloft, we will kick up the dose some more, and see if I can get more of my tics under control. Yay! Whether or not the Zoloft helps my depression (irrelevant, really) all I want from this stuff is to reduce my anxiety, and lower my obsessive behavior, so that I can kinda control my day.

So, boo, but also yay.

I hope you are doing better than I am. Carry on.