Making friends with pain














When I'm constantly fighting the pain, my body becomes a battle ground... so I've decided to be buddhist about it and embrace my enemy :)

Feeling electric!

It's been a pretty intense year. After spending 2010 working mostly on this blog and my book, this year I have been in worse shape physically - and have had time for reflection. After I got the grant to start a Norwegian blog about the health care system  I've been getting more involved in politics concerning chronic disease, patients rights and freedom of choice. With more pain, there is less energy, and I've also had to rethink many of my viewpoints on chronic disease and the biomedical paradigm (which I used to criticize abundantly). Things are changing, and I guess I'm learning and developing.

Today is a great day, because I've just received a new shipment of TENS electrodes from my sister in Austin. My last TENS electrodes were wearing thin already in May, and with a new cold season approaching and rapidly increasing pain levels I've been trying to get new ones, but they are hard to come by and ridiculously expensive here in Scandinavia. But with some help from my globetrotting family I have now received 48 new electrodes, which should keep me supplied for atleast a year:

These things aren't easy to find where I live...
but they work wonders for my chronic pain!



So for the next few months I'll be wired and electrified daily. I wear the TENS unit while working, driving, reading, resting... whatever I need to do - and it immediately diminishes my pain and helps me keep intake of medication low. I'm training a lot these days, following a pretty strict physical regime with ashtanga yoga and physiotherapy and I hope that will help me manage to stay on my legs through the winter!


With the TENS on my belt I am fully mobile