Human barometer

Chronic pain = human barometer. 

It's funny how before the FM, weather merely meant an inconvenience to my day or an opportunity to get out and be active. Now, the weather shifts and so does my entire body.

The last few days have been brutal! Saturday evening, Sunday and finally culminating on Monday, my head, limbs, back, neck, shoulders, face, ears, feet and even my toes felt the impact of Mother Nature's inconsistency. In spite of this all-over pain, it was the head pain that really incapacitated me. It's always the head that is the worst. Honestly, I could handle the other pain, but it is really hard to think, speak and function when your head feels like a giant alien creature is trying to make it's way out from behind the eyes, through the neck and out the ears.

Head pain cripples thought and impacts speech. As an educated, fairly intelligent individual, I pride myself on speaking articulately and writing comprehensively. It was truly quite embarrassing when I found myself misspelling prove (I spelt it proove), not once, but twice, on a note for my students to copy down. Worse still, when a student challenged me on it in a very disrespectful manner, the pain made it difficult for me to "bite my tongue" and not lose my temper.

Previous pain fog occurrences have been equally embarrassing, as well as challenging to my authority and credibility as a teacher. Forgetting student's names. Names that I had known for months. Unable to locate commonly used vocabulary in the deep, traumatised centres of my brain. Yet, I am supposed to be the educated one?!?!?

The weather of the past couple of years has really made having chronic pain a challenge. Steadfastness of pressure and precipitation ensures some stability in the levels of pain. Changes from one day to the next, from one extreme to the other - this is Mother Nature's way of kicking us all when we are already down, making it much harder to get back up again.

Rain, rain go away.... don't come back again any day!