I thought I had misread the “.5,” and assumed you meant a 5! lol. How on earth is a .5 even on a scale from 1-10? And how is it a problem that it is a 1? I quite literally do not understand. I probably could rate my jaw “pain” a 1 from these past few days, but I am not even taking any ibuprofen or anything. It’s just slightly annoying.

Sorry-I probably am a bit triggered because I have spent the past 9 months in constant, excruciating pain, having to leave my job that i loved and was really the main thing giving me purpose in life, because my pain was at about a 8-10 every single day. I would just lay in bed and cry every night. And no doctor would give me anything other than gabapentin, which did nothing.

thankfully, i believe it is turning a corner, but only out of desperation and luck. no medical test or exam could figure it out, and my last option was surgery, which; even my surgeon lowered the success rate of helping the pain for me. Longgg story short, the problem basically started because i had major grief that i wasn’t dealing with, severe depression, and just came out of a horrific experience at the inpatient place i stayed. my chronic pain started the next week. i ended up back at my favorite inpatient place twice in a month, back in may. i was very, very close to giving up. I could not take living in extreme pain every day. It ruined my life. I met someone at the inpatient place who was convinced nothing was actually wrong with my feet-that it was a mind/body issue. A month prior to that I would have dismissed this. I was in extreme desperation, so i said i would check into the resources she gave me.

a month later and the pain started to lessen in severity, and then lessen in how much of the day it hurt, and slowly i had more time with just a little bit of pain. i still am in pain, but i have started walking every day (i hadn’t gone for a walk since last december), and have stopped using an ice bath to numb them, which was the only thing that provided pain relief.

i am so; so glad that i am slowly figuring out how to really deal with the pain, which is great, but i am still unemployed, and benefits run out soon. it’s a very long road ahead, and today was a pretty large setback in some ways, but it is sloowwllyy improving.

Well, sorry Artie! I didn’t mean to tell my life story in this post, lol. Today was just a really bad day. I do hope you can get the support you need with your upcoming surgery.