A tough first month
Beginning Week 4 after my diagnosis of Osteoarthritis, I am finally sitting down to write about how things are going. The month of October overall has been difficult and painful, but not as bad as when I first started treatment with my new chiropractor. The first two weeks were rough, the first week itself was hell.
To be fair, I am not blaming my chiropractor in the least for this. I have A LOT of inflammation in my joints & body due to the arthritis and this condition has been going on for YEARS. I knew from what he told me that correcting it would be painful, I was just not prepared for HOW PAINFUL and troublesome it would be in my foot.
Trying to walk
I was warned to ice the sore spots down after each visit. I did, especially after that first treatment. But getting up and going to the bathroom that first night nearly landed me on the floor. The pain in my right foot was beyond excruciating. I turned around and went back to bed for a minute to lie down, take some Ibuprofen and take a breather. I literally could not put any pressure on it whatsoever, even hanging on to handholds the entire way there.
To understand why this was, one has to understand the condition with my right foot. I imagine your big toe looks more like a thumb, jutting out at nearly a 45 degree angle to the rest of your foot. Pretty weird, right? It wasn’t always this way, slowly growing more and more aberrant since my 30th birthday. This has the added complication of making standing more than a few minutes in place very painful. Despite this, the severe pain was in my ankle and in the bend at the top of each foot where it connects to the leg. According to my chiro, this is one of the most important joints in the body.
Somehow I got to the bathroom and back, accompanied by much internal and some external cursing. That first week and a half I was on near constant amounts of Ibuprofen every day without fail. The level of pain sapped my energy so that the first 2 1/2 weeks I got work and networking done just barely. Every day I came home and straight to icing down whatever was hurting, then to bed. I only got a break and saw some energy return late last week.
Restrictions
From the first visit I was warned not to sit on recliners, rocking chairs OR the sofa. That last was a big blow. My favorite place after work to sit was on the sofa to relax a few minutes and when my husband came home and where we watched t.v. at night. The most frustrating restriction, however, was that I can only sleep on my back, not my side. I was warned that it would “undo” the work my chiro put in on my visits. The first few nights trying to stay on my back was damn-near impossible and except for a few ten-minute segments of doing it to relieve the discomfort, I mostly stuck to it. It’s easier to do now, but I still try it for a minute or two until my hips remind me how much it hurts.
Next week
I will get more into what is going on in my body that was making me so miserable, what he is doing to adjust me and our plan of treatment.
If you know of someone with Osteoarthritis, please share this article with them and follow what happens in future posts. Thank you for caring!
Kristine