We had our first visit to a Pain Clinic in Thunder Bay last week. Well it’s my first visit to one and Juliet had visited one in Ottawa without being able to finish the program due to her Chronic Vomiting at the time.
The experience was great. This was sort of an assessment / intake before the Pain Clinic Course that we will be attending in the fall.
Juliet was really happy because he was able to do all the different tests on her like the sensory tests that the past Clinic was unable to finish because of her pain, even though she told them to keep going they pretty much refused.
At the end of the day she was beyond worn out and even a few days later she is still having a lot of fatigue issues and pain from the vibration tool he had placed around her ears / skull. But she is in very good mood and high spirits.
The biggest conclusion that we found was her nervous system is completely out of sync. One side of her body was hotter and more painful where the other side was colder and less painful. This was a big important discovery for a doctor to see and understand it.
The biggest solution that he offered for therapy was swimming. Sadly with us living so far north in Ontario, we don’t have an Indoor swimming pool to be able to really accommodate her. His second suggestion was pretending to swim. We sadly are still unsure outside of mentally pretending how one actually swims out of water.
From what we understood from the swimming besides the benefits of exercise portion of things, the body would help provide micro massages all over her body and help stimulate the nervous system. The big thing also was that it be like almost floating in space as she could last longer through the therapy.
Just a note that Juliet has never been able to survive through hands on massage / physical touching therapy and normally causes way to much pain and then vomiting.
The great news and also not so great news is starting in Late September Juliet will be attending 10 sessions at the pain clinic once a Month on Mondays for 3 hours in the afternoon.
The bad news is we have to drive 800 KM’s round trip and as much as I don’t mind driving that long and in fact would drive her to the other side of the planet, It’s a bit hard on her body quite a bit. In fact it’s so hard on her we actually drive there and let her rest for the night. We go to the appointment the next day and then we leave the following morning. Meaning we are kind of stuck 2 nights at a hotel and 3 days in total.
With all this being said and done it only gives Juliet 4 days to recover till we are back on the road again and it’s been 5 days since we were in Thunder Bay for a 30 minute appointment to give you an idea and she is totally worn down.
Our biggest concern of course as well is mental fatigue and the classes themselves. From my understanding they are there to learn and do mental and physical activities. We asked if I can partake being her spouse and caregiver and they seem fine with it, but there could be some complications with it. Sadly there might be someone uncomfortable to having an Able Body person attend. Sadly if this happens it means Juliet is on her own and we both know that will lose a lot of valuable education and information that could be used to make her life better.
Either way, we have not been told yet, but we were warned that is might happen sadly and I don’t really blame that person. Maybe if possible they will let us talk to the person if they were uncomfortable about it and I can insure them if they were willing.
We still look forward to fall Pain Clinic and I hope I can partake in it even if it’s from the sidelines. The classes are going to have 30 people in them so it might be a bit overwhelming but will see how it goes.
Juliet was asked to focus on one major area first. Juliet has decided to work on her facial pain as this causes her the most problems to the point a bit of air hitting her face in a movement can be very debilitating at times. She is hoping if she can get her facial pain under control, that she could get better sleep and have improved mental functionality as well as more stamina to be able to do more in her days.
So this is a really exciting event for us and I look forward to talking more about the experience once we have finished a class or two.