Pockets of peace
On the trickery and false hope of pain medications.
I’m currently on prednisone for the third time in two years. If you’ve ever been on this drug then you know it’s a shaky mix of heaven and hell—warping moments of euphoria and painlessness with sleeplessness and jitters. When you google it, the horrors it can cause abound—it’s bad for your bones, your skin, your stomach, your adrenal glands…the list goes on. But it’s also one of the only medications that can (at least temporarily) tamp down inflammation and the pain that comes with it. To take it is to choose one brand of suffering over another, a calculation that anyone with chronic pain knows well.
On Friday, it gave me the first few hours of being almost entirely pain-free that I’ve experienced since my body fell apart. I went for a run in the sunshine (something I never do anymore) and felt the old exhilaration of cardio coming back, briefly un-muddied by my usual piercing eye, jaw, throat, and spine pain that makes even the most passive activities feel insurmountable. For 30 minutes, I remembered why I once loved to run—the way it tunes you into your body (a reality that’s no longer pleasant with chronic pain), dials down outside noise, and clears a foggy/anxious/crabby head. It’s always brought me back to my best self, a self who feels almost mythical to me now, wiped away by an onslaught of uncomfortable sensations and the heartwrenching emotions that come with them.
Medications like prednisone are a kind of torture for me, as I’ve come to learn that their effects (for those of us with enduring chronic health issues) rarely, if ever, last. My loved ones tell me to enjoy the pockets of peace they bring but it feels cruel to let myself give into a joy that I know will end in only a few short days. Why celebrate like I’m “back” when it’s just a temporary ruse? A trick I’m essentially playing on myself.
One of the most difficult parts of chronic pain is how it renders hope absurd—to continue to have it, after so much false relief, is to (I tell myself) be an idiot. It’s like latching onto a relationship you know won’t last, only to deepen the wound it causes once it inevitably ends. To be clear-eyed about the reality of the situation is to protect myself from further harm, ensuring that the comedown (when I stop the meds in a few short days and the pain returns on cue) is more of a sting than a reverberating shock.
I’ve tried to find lasting peace in Cymbalta, Gabapentin, Low-Dose Naltrexone, Topamax, Etodolac, Nurtec, Diclofenac, Amitriptyline, and so many other medications I couldn’t name two years ago but whose myriad use cases and shitty side effects are now etched in my brain. I’ve had so many needles stabbed into my face and neck for nerve blocks, botox in areas that are not cosmetic-enhancing but simply strange, and local anesthetics that swell everything up into deformity for days. It all amounts to useless warfare in a one-sided battle I can’t seem to win.
Pain psychologists love to say that such “negative” thoughts only serve to reinforce the pain and, for a time, I tried hard to believe them. I read all the books about thinking my way out of pain and tried pain-reprocessing techniques like somatic tracking and meditation. All it really did was leave me more frustrated, giving me another proverbial wall to slam my body up against as I silently begged for a door to appear, for someone to finally let me out.
Of course, now that I’m a beggar, not a chooser, I’ll take the relief I can get, however illusory it may be. I’ll soak up the 30 blissful minutes, the momentary feeling that I’ve returned to myself, but one eye will stay turned towards the reality strike on the horizon. Lying to myself has never saved me, it’s always been the truth that helps me endure.