Anyone here want to share their resources for dealing with (semi-)chronic injuries (or illness)?
My particular misery comes from bulging disc in my lumbar spine. A little bulge at L3/L4, and a big bulge at L4/L5. The big one presses on the nerve, causing the back pain trifecta of burning, tingling, and numbness. I can go days or weeks without pain. Then the injury flares up, and it hurts, and the hurting wears me down. It's not so much the level of pain, but the constancy. It just never goes away, or shifts.
The injury happened 5 years ago, so I do have some tools in the toolbox. Here's the stuff that I've tried:
1. Hydrocodone & Oxycodone. Very effective, and very delightful. I use narcotics strategically, but I still managed to become half hooked
2. Muscle relaxers. No affect on the pain, and made me a zombie
3. Lots of physical therapy. The original injury healed 95%, which I think is a great miracle
4. Maintain a good baseline of physical fitness, to support and protect the poor spine as much as possible
5. Lots of posture correction and functional movement correction. As described by Jolie Bookspan and Kelly Starrett
6. Meditation, as described in Full Catastrophic Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zin. Takeaway - there is a difference between pain and suffering. Also described by Tim Parks in Teach Us To Sit Still: A Skeptics Search for Health and Healing. It works, but I'd still, you know, like the pain to go away.
5. Adopted some of the practices of Tension Myositis Syndrome, which advocates a feedback loop between fear, tension, and pain. I don't believe my back pain is psychological, but I think being afraid of the pain probably does make it worse.
6. Spoon Theory, as described by Christine Miserandino, specifically applied towards exercise and activities. There's simply some things I can no longer do, and expect to be pain free. Biking is no longer part of my life, and that's sad, but it's also just the way it has to be.
Is there anything I'm missing? The only thing I can think of is surgery, and surgical correction of spinal injuries is a huge crap-shoot. I want to postpone as long as possible.