My Everest…

As I was waiting on another specialist appointment…my physio came to me with a new diagnosis, ‘Central Sensitization!‘ WHHHAAATTTT????  This one was a hard one to sell and and even harder one for me to understand and wrap my head around. I was told that my alarm system was broken in my body (huh? WTF?) EXCUSE ME ? Come Again? Let’s say you have a house and you have an alarm system in it.  When you leave you turn it on and it only goes off when something makes it go on like when a burglar breaks in. Yes ? Ok yea ….in my house (body) I have an alarm system too, however mine is so sensitive that even the smallest thing is going to set it off!! Alright then how do we turn it off ???  Hence we embark on a very long path of learning what causes my brain (hence the central) to say to my nervous system to  flare up and for it to do it in such a great manner that it is so very painful and for such a long time for it not to want to do it again (hence the sensitization).  The tricky part here was and still is at times is we don’t know what is going to set off the darn thing, and the duration. This is where the “don’t poke the bear” analogy came into play. With the bear analogy, he’s the brain and he controls the amount of pain that is sent to my central nervous system, because people with Central Sensitization are taught that pain is in the brain.  We are not crazy, it’s actually the brain causing the pain. Sometimes the smallest of things could flare me up for the longest of times.  Things you think would flare me up didn’t and vice versa.  Thankfully I found hot temperatures were soothing, however on the flip side cold – flared me up.  We think massage therapy was something that I always went to so my body was used to it and there was no flares there.   With the chiropractor there was a few times that we had flares but then the body got used to it and thankfully that it did, because if it wasn’t for the chiro care I received during the Covid lockup I think I would be worse off now. Physio too, it was all trial and error ! How close could we get to the bear before it attacked, and how long is it going to stay angry at me? Can we bribe it with treats? Aka.. how close could we push the nervous system before the brain retaliated in a flare up? If so could we make it calm down faster with a hot pad?  If so for how long?  The weirdest thing about my bear was that he would actually let you get close and allow you to do things, so in the moment you felt good. He gave you a bit of a confidence boost, and then at some point later on in the day that ass (the bear) would tell the Central Nervous System to give you a full on flare, smackdown WWF style! It was like he was sitting there watching me, his claws poised over a big flashing red button with the letters FLARE on it.  I pictured the humour and pleasure he had, his maniacal smile looming over me. Sending me into tears of pain, anxiety and depression.  The process seemed to be an unbreakable loop and the damn bear had control. The Central Sensitization recovery process seemed to be one huge experiment!  But the ultimate question was how long could I take this before I cried uncle? The bear had full CONTROL of my flare. But I had help and the tools to PREVENT the flare. The key here was to go really slow, so slow it was frustrating. It’s easier said than done when the bugger strikes you later on in the day.  However I had 2 options: either keep trying and keep on doing stuff or give up. I think you know the option I chose!

Photo Credits (Featured Photo): Cent Sens