Notes from the pain management workshop, week 2

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This week was a lot more comprehensive than the first week, and it feels like a lot more happened in about the same amount of time.

The major areas of focus were: problem-solving, dealing with difficult emotions (especially useful for me right now), physical activity, relaxation techniques, and dealing with fatigue.

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Notes from the pain management workshop, week 1

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A few months ago I signed up for the “Living Well with Chronic Pain” workshop that’s put on a few times a year by my HMO. It’s a six-week course that meets once a week. I figure it would be helpful to share the key insights from each session here, since I know a lot of my followers have similar issues and would like to benefit as well.

The textbook for the workshop is Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain (affiliate link). It also comes with a pain-management exercise audiobook on CD.

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Wrist wrest

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My current wrist care regimen, which is… well, slowly helping me to not be in quite so much pain (more slowly than I’d like):

  • Using Time Out with the following breaks set up (in decreasing priority order):
    • Get to bed: break for 4 minutes every 19 minutes, between 1 AM and 6 AM
    • Normal: break for 3 minutes every 20 minutes, all day long; only allow 3 1-minute postponements per day, and show the postpone count
    • Micro: break for 10 seconds every 4 minutes
    • Exercise: 5 minutes every hour, all day long; only allow 3 5-minute postponements per day, and show the postpone count. Randomly selects one of a few different wrist- and core-strength exercises for me to do.
  • During a normal or get to bed break, do one of the following:
    • Clean something
    • Do some dishes
    • Spin a powerball (affiliate link)
    • Stretches
    • Squish some putty
  • Don’t worry about not getting stuff done
  • Type exclusively using a keyboard.io while (sometimes) wearing padded wrist braces (affiliate link)
  • Every time I walk through my office door, do some chin-ups (affiliate link)
  • Actually drink plenty of water and do stretches
  • Remember that it isn’t a race

(For Windows and Linux users, the closest equivalent to Time Out is Workrave although it has plenty of problems.)

Smart phones, smart watches, what’s next, a smart bed?

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Lately my sleep has been pretty much garbage, and I probably need a sleep study. But sleep studies are expensive and a lot of hassle to maybe find out nothing’s actually wrong, so in the meantime I got a sleep tracker kit.

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