The Absence of Expected Pain

Today I finally got a cortisone shot. One I’ve been trying to get for over two years after my last one helped so much.

Why it’s taken two years is not the point (God Bless the NHS). The point is that today my leg is pain free.

My leg is never pain free. If my hip feels okay, my knee aches. If, by some miracle, both of those things feel fine, my fibro flares. But today, temporarily, thanks to the anaesthetic that is part of getting a cortisone injection, I feel no pain at all.

It’s disturbing.

If some part of you hurts all the time, and I mean 24/7/365, and then suddenly doesn’t? It’s a shock to the system. It almost makes you want to cause yourself pain, so you can recognize your own usually painful place.

And, in this case, I can’t take advantage of it feeling so good. I’m on ‘sit as much as you can’ for the next 48 hours and then ‘you can go more or less back to normal, but do not over do it’ for the rest of the week.

So tomorrow Simon is walking Adam to school. And my mega shopping excursion on Friday is being cut down to a hair cut and then straight home.

And by then some of the pain will be back anyway.

In fact, some of it will be back by bedtime tonight.

Cortisone won’t help the fibro. Dammit.