Dave, I would love to read your posts.....but can you please break them up into smaller paragraphs? My MS eyes cannot read big blocks of text as your posts are written.

When things have gone on TOO far, for TOO long, I pray. Not that I am a deeply religious person, but my faith has always pulled me through in the final hour.

I haven't had to endure constant pain, that didn't let up after several months though. If praying didn't work, I think there are times that I might have given up if it went on much longer. I'm not sure what I would have done, but I know I wouldn't have the will to persevere ...

Sounds morbid, but it's the truth.

Cherie

Oh, and I REALLY appreciate and cherish the many times that things aren't SO bad ... that helps get me through the bad times too. I KNOW things can get better, and I live for those days ahead.

Dave...I just do what I have to unless the pain prevents it. I beat my GS at PSP racing, we paint, we watch movies. This time of year I am outside more since it is cooler, I can not be out in any heat, even if it is in the high 70's...if I get to hot, it takes forever to cool down. This can cause some of the pain to get worse. When it is at its worse...I can't walk, the muscles are in such a spasm...


So how do I cope? I do my best to focus on other things, I engross myself in things that take all my attention...such as sewing, wouldn't want to sew a finger. Wood working...wouldn't want to cut off a finger, painting...you have to look at what you are painting...a tree needs to look like a tree.

I also take warm baths and wait to cool down...during this time I focus on the blessings I do have.

Does this answer your question better?

Cherie, I would bet everything I have, which isn't much, that you would persevere and then tell everyone else how to accomplish it

You would go on just as I have, just like many others have.

Everyone has different coping skills and when put to the test we can suprise ourselves in our ability to keep going even under the most difficult circumstances.

I believe (for me) adapting to pain is also about acceptance. My pain is what it is, it's not leaving (yet ) but I still have a life to live. If the medical community can't find something to help then it's all up to me to find and pull out the inner strength I know is there inside me.

What about the use of bold type? I just found the spell check so that will be better too. And what about font size?

As stated, I think, I used to run a site myself that had about 400 members at one time. (Long story why it is now closed.) I used to try to get members to use only black and size 4 or 5 fonts. Strange that I forgot this.

Now then, the following is something I posted on a cognition thread. I have NOT seen this here, and it is not intended as correction, but merely to give you another way to tell those you see doing it, not to.

One thing I forgot, in all of this, there is no competition; no "well my pain is worse than your's," or "I have dealt with this longer than you, so I know better...." We are all on the same ship, going the same direction. This ship is a working one, and as such, it takes all of us working together to make the ship head into calmer waters.. Hmmmm Not bad for an guy who wasn't in the Navy. (I was in the Army, a much better... op's, bragging. Food for thought.

Mave

You are probably right, Snoopy.

I definitely did not mean to imply that anyone else should follow my current train of thought either. I just know that it has been TOO much on a few occasions, and I am thankful that it let up when it did.

Thanks for the reality check though.

That doesn't seem to happen much around here anyway, Dave, although I have seen it on other forums. Generally speaking, any time people mention their situation it is meant as encouragement for others; that they too CAN get through their challenges.

Cherie

"That doesn't seem to happen much around here anyway, Dave, although I have seen it on other forums. Generally speaking, any time people mention their situation it is meant as encouragement for others; that they too CAN get through their challenges."

No! I didn't mean to imply it did here, and now we're on it, that is an amazing feat that not all sites like this can boast about. It shows that people are paid attention to and not ignored.

There was a feature of pain management that I myself, still have yet to figure out how to deal with, hair-trigger anger. I go off in a flash when I'm in the higher end of the pain scale and someone does something dumb to cause more pain. Especially after it was pointed out to them.

That or when I'm trying to get help in relieving the pain through movement. Because I am an OLD solder, I tend to be a bit.... direct when it comes to instruction/requests. I know this and am working hard at fixing that.

But after explaining the nature of the pain, and then explaining briefly what I would like to happen to take the pressure off, to a nursing assistant, and they still cause pain.... well you get the idea.

So in the category of pain management, I think I have everything covered, EXCEPT that is, the anger feature.

MSDave