Monday morning, I woke up with my knee STILL in pain! It’s not the same kind of pain that I’ve been in since September 21st (THANK GOD!). But, it’s pain just the same. It hurts just enough to be uncomfortable (but, maybe my pain threshold is just messed up having had MS for so long…). My most recent #ChatMS was about pain. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE these Twitter chats. They are on Mondays at 7 pm (Eastern). It is a forum hosted by @MustStopMS where people with MS talk about different topics that only people with MS understand. I’ve found it to be quite therapeutic for me, I’ve had MS for so long that I’m at a place where I’m totally okay with talking about it. I like to think that this fact helps other people. But back to what I was saying about pain tolerance. A few people commented that people with MS have different pain tolerances than able-bodied people. What probably would be a 10 to able-bodied people, is a 5 for people with MS. We are in pain ALL THE TIME so we just deal with it. In the ambulance after my injury, the EMT asked me what my pain was, at that point the pain hadn’t totally set in so I told him 3.5. He said, “Well, you have MS, we have to take that seriously.”
Retrospectively, I’m glad they did because this hurts SO BADLY! I got out of bed and kind of shook my head, irritated that it STILL hurts. I met Sean coming out of his room and I tell him that I feel like Nancy Kerrigan. He asks, “Who is she?” I told him to look it up kind of astonished that he doesn’t know. How would he know though?! I’m old. I have SO much more respect for knee injuries and the people who endure them. My knee surgery was 17 years ago so my memory of it has faded a bit. But, now I remember how much it hurts! I can honestly say that hurts more than having a child! Sean still hasn’t looked up who Nancy Kerrigan was by the way.
So, I get to ATI and Brad worked on me and I asked him about the swelling after he worked on it for most of my time just before it was time for ice and stim. My knee was bent and he told me that it looks better and the swelling went down, I asked about the outside because that is where it STILL hurts. It’s not the all-over, extreme, throbbing pain any more, but now after 5 weeks, the throbbing pain is only on the outside of my knee. It’s uncomfortable and it wakes me up. STILL. Brad looked at the outside of my knee and gently pressed it and nodded. He told me it was, “Poofy.” Poofy. I smiled to myself and appreciated that he said it that way. Ice. Stim. and Brad comes over to tape me. I told him that I was glad that he described it as , Poofy.” He laughed and told me that it was still poofy again.