The pain is back

As mentioned before, my back attacks have returned. Probably the hardest thing to get over when they show up, besides the pain itself, is the fact that I have no idea when they will strike. I get about two minutes warning in my jaw and then BOOM! - it's here. When my jaw starts to seize up (always on the right side) and my mouth feels like it's in a permanent frown, I immediately reach for my naproxen and take one as quickly as I can. Unfortunately, as is the case with most medication, it takes around 30 minutes for the naproxen to work and by that time, I've already suffered through the worst of the attack. I guess the easiest way to explain why I take it at all is so that cyclical nature of the attacks won't keep me in pain all day long. Quite frankly, just dealing with it for 30 minutes straight is enough to make me want to pass out. I can't imagine what I would do if I had to endure the pain cycles all day!

Today, my pain started as soon as I got into work and had removed my coat and boots. At least at home I can suffer by myself without anyone walking in on me and wondering what I'm doing. It's very difficult to explain the pain to anyone else and that I just need to be alone when it shows up. Due to the nature of my job, my door is essentially open all day so it's a lot harder to hide the fact that I'm in agony if someone happens to walk in. Luckily, that wasn't the case this morning and the cycles of pain seem to have dissipated at least for now. I guess the naproxen has kicked in! I can still feel the underlying effects of the initial attacks though so I need to be careful not to set the cycle off again. I tend to treat the attacks as a time bomb of sorts and I do whatever I can to ensure that they only go off once at a time (usually within the course of the same day).

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what starts the attacks in the first place but my best guess is that my curve is shifting again. More than likely, it's shifting further in the wrong direction but there's no way for me to know that for certain. I had an attack back on December 29 in the car on the way home from my brother's (thankfully I was a passenger and not the driver). My mom was in the front seat and had been talking to me but I couldn't answer her. I finally blurted out that I couldn't talk but she didn't really understand why the attack would stop me from talking. She asked me about that last night and I finally explained it in the best way I could: when the pain comes, I can't think about anything but the pain so talking during that time is essentially impossible. I can't formulate thoughts and the words that would come out of my mouth would make no sense whatsoever. The pain these days takes place almost exclusively in my chest and makes me feel as though I can't breathe, which of course makes talking an extremely difficult chore at that point. I'm not sure if she could really understand my explanation but I think she simply interpreted it as an obviously bad situation that sounds very serious. Of course, that's absolutely true.