A Pained Life: Tincture of Time

 By Carol Levy, PNN Columnist

“Tincture of time” is a medical maxim. Wait it out. Let's see what happens. Give it time. 

But when you have pain from trigeminal neuralgia, like I do, even a few seconds is too long to wait. Yet it takes time for pills to work. 

I don’t take my codeine prescription before the pain gets bad. I wait until the pain starts, then I take a pill. I hate taking codeine. It makes me feel awful, dry-mouthed and cloudy-headed. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes before it kicks in.  

Unless I let the pain get out of hand by continuing to do things that make it worse, I find my pain usually starts to calm down on its own, in about 20 minutes. The same amount of time it takes for the codeine to work. 

Maybe it's worth the wait. So many of us in pain are complaining, rightfully, that their doctors have reduced their meds or even stopped them completely. It's an awful situation, but one that may have some answers in the self-help column. 

When my pain starts, I no longer immediately head for the codeine bottle. I stop what I'm doing (which may not be possible for many of us), and wait the 20 minutes or so it would have taken for the codeine to help. And, thanks to tincture of time, I am better. Not always; but more often than not.

Tincture of time is one way for us to deal with the pain -- and simultaneously allows us to save pills for when the pain really does gets get out of hand.

It also has a downside. Many of us have lived with our pain for years or, like me, for decades. You get used to it, or as used to pain as one can get. I no longer talk about the pain unless I'm specifically asked about it. Then I usually just “pooh-pooh” it. I am so accustomed to pain that it is now a part of me. And I would rather not talk about it.

I do this with doctors. Any doctor that I see must know what my situation is, just by reading the names of the pain I have. They should know, so I don't make a big deal out of it. 

In that case, a tincture of time is harmful. I dismiss the pain even when I'm asking for help. They respond by not taking me seriously or thinking, “Well, her pain can't be that bad.”

Time can be an enemy or a friend. It may be the medicine we need or one that we need to ignore.

Carol Jay Levy has lived with trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic facial pain disorder, for over 30 years. She is the author of “A Pained Life, A Chronic Pain Journey.”  Carol is the moderator of the Facebook support group “Women in Pain Awareness.” Her blog “The Pained Life” can be found here.

Health Is the Wealth We Need

By Barby Ingle, PNN Columnist

I recently came across an interesting quote on Instagram about the four types of wealth. The quote goes like this:

“There are 4 types of wealth:

1. Financial wealth (money)

2. Social wealth (status)

3. Time wealth (freedom)

4. Physical wealth (health)

Be wary of jobs that lure you in with 1 and 2, but rob you of 3 and 4.”

The quote is meant as advice for people looking for employment and the types of jobs they should seek. But I look at it from the health perspective, since that is my biggest challenge in life.  I want health wealth. Financial, social and time wealth are often dependent on our health wealth. Without health we are limited in what we can do.  

People planning to have a child wish for a healthy baby. We also wish for long and healthy lives. We don’t always get to choose our health or even learn how to achieve it. I believe one way to help this would be putting more emphasis on health education in school.

It is hard to have good social wealth when your health is poor. You can’t participate in as many social outings or events, and you may have a poorer attitude about your living situation if you have a chronic pain condition. Belonging to a social group, maintaining friendships, being actively engaged in a positive productive way, and even being married all raise your social wealth.

Maintaining financial wealth is more straightforward. You either have money or you don’t. But even when you have money, you are often working on making, getting or winning more. Most of us would love to be millionaires, but even on relatively modest incomes of $75,000, studies show that people are happier.

Now take the average income of someone disabled by pain. Our households typically bring in less than $30,000 and many single disabled people are living on less than $15,000 a year. It is difficult to climb out of a financial rut with poor health and medical bills needing to be paid.

I know chronic pain patients who work, but due to poor health they are not able to take jobs that are high paying or sustainable long-term. Missing work due to illness, brain fog due to pain, depression, anxiety and painsomnia all affect our ability to be productive in a standard work environment. And it is often more difficult for a company hire you due to extra liability or disability costs made to accommodate you.

Even when your own health is good and you are taking care of someone who is disabled, it affects your finances through the type of jobs you take, health insurance, medical bills and supporting the rest of the family.

My husband has lost multiple jobs because my health care and insurance costs were too high for his employers. They found or invented reasons to let him go, such as missing too much work because he had to take time off to drive me to appointments. One company fired him for entering the parking lot without scanning his badge at the guard gate on the way in, a common practice in the mornings when the line to enter the lot was long.

For all of the reasons above, I believe that health wealth is the most important when it comes to living life to the fullest. It takes the most effort and action of all four types of wealth.

We strive to improve our health wealth so that we can live better lives. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for retirement to enjoy ourselves, so we must find and create moments when we can use our time and social wealth. They are the two most easily obtainable when living with chronic illness and striving for health wealth.

Barby Ingle lives with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), migralepsy and endometriosis. Barby is a chronic pain educator, patient advocate, and president of the International Pain Foundation. She is also a motivational speaker and best-selling author on pain topics.

More information about Barby can be found at her website. 

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.