Living with Chronic Pain

My pain started after a head injury in 1990. It began as if a cloud had engulfed me. Aside from the injury site it was quite benign in the beginning. As time went by the pain went everywhere, constantly changing so that when I saw the doctors I was always reporting on out of date symptoms.

My disablility was partly emotional at first because I couldn’t depend on myself to do the things I had normally done with ease, but it gradually became entirely physical. No medications helped during the early years.

In 1997/8, I trained to be a massage therapist. For several years I was able to work with people and derive some income. It was enjoyable and I felt useful again. But each year, my symptoms grew worse and spread until in 2000 I had to quit working on others in order to devot my time to trying to stay ahead of my own worsening problems.

By 2003, I had made enough progress on my tight muscles that I was able to benefit from taking tramadol and skelaxin. They gave me a short break from the pain and allowed me to make progress on my muscles. This process and my ability to engage directly with my pain is what kept me alive from 2000 until 2007, when I experienced a breakthrough. I will describe it because it explains why I now advocate oxygen therapy for chronic pain and head injury.

As I was working on the tight, hard painful muscles in my chest, they began to soften, gradually. The pain was incredible and I had to stop working occasionally to prevent my passing out. This process lasted about 4 hours, but when I was done I wa able to breath deeper, almost effortlessly, for the first time in memory. The next day I went to the recreation center where I exercise, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to do my normal routine almost 10 percent faster without more exertion than usual. In addition, I found I wasn’t as tired afterward as I usually became after my workout.

After this experience, I began to research the symptoms of hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in the tissues and cells of the body). They were almost identical to the earliest of my symptoms after the head injury. I was excited. I asked my doctor for an oxygen prescription. She refused to give me one. I then found a hyperbaric oxygen treatment [HBOT] center, near me, and arranged for several treatments as an experiment.

I received 7 treatments. They were expensive and insurance wouldn’t pay for them. But it was money well spent for me. Within minutes of beginning to breathe pure oxygen, I could literally feel tight muscles begin to soften all over my body. My mind and thinking, which were typically foggy and unclear began clearing almost as quickly. Over an 8 week period, the severity of my pain went from a scale that started at 100 and went to 1000, back to a somewhat normal 1 to 10 scale. my emotional stabilized and I was ableto begin interacting with my family again.

I couldn’t afford to continue the HBOT so I again asked my doctor for an oxygen presciption, which she refused. Finally, over the objections of my wife, I faced my fear of the unknown and bought an oxygen concentrator. I use it daily, and it helps me stay focused on a task, it increases my energy level and it allows me to make significant progress, using massage techniques, to reclaim my tight, almost dead muscles and rebuild a life that I can be happy with.

The pain is not all magically gone, but it is manageable now. I use tramadol, when needed, in small doses when the pain of muscles coming back to life gets intense. But I now know that the pain doesn’t last forever, and that there is reason to believe that I will return to full function again. This is the first time in over 17 years that I can say that.

Any of you who have experienced chronic pain know, first hand, how it robs your joy of living and threatens the health of your relationships. I am now beginning to heal some of the damage done to my relationships over all the years of pain. I am getting to know my wife and kids better, and I actually feel like I have something to contribute again. That is priceless. I am working to finish the remodelling of our house (that I began in 1999, before the pain became unbearable). I can’t work non-stop, like a job would require, but I am able to make measurable, consistent progress again.

If anyone has questions or comments regarding the oxygen therapy I have used and am using, please respond to this post and I will provide more information. I have recently found a doctor to give me the oxygen prescription so I don’t have to bootleg oxygen. Some doctors are less fearful and more accomodating than others. Some of them will welcome a fresh approach. For those of you whose headaches are a major part of your symptoms there is already some precedent for using oxygen to treat cluster headaches.

The use of massage therapy to treat chronic pain is becoming more common, thankfully, but the addition of oxygen to the process will significantly speed up the healing process.

Thanks for reading my post.