So I should figure out what to say. This isn’t a Kaiser appointment so I have more than 15 minutes. Hurrah!

I’m thinking I should start at my head and work my way down. I get severe headaches. Usually I think of them as “eye strain” but I got new glasses last year and it didn’t help the way it did in previous years. These headaches center around my temples and mostly streak back towards my ears. That throbs in the 2-5 pain range pretty much daily. The whole muscle group that supports my skull has been unhappy and fairly crampy since I had kids. My entire skull hurts all the time.

I have vertigo off and on. I used to be prone to blacking out but that hasn’t happened in years. I go through periods of extreme tinnitus.

It is difficult for me to breathe through my nose. If I try I end up gasping for breathe through my mouth.

Before I move down from the head it is important to note that a large part of the reason I am going to the doctor is because I have PTSD and GAD and depression and I am having a hard time controlling my behavior when my body is in this much pain all the time. My PTSD symptoms include hypervigilance, flashbacks, avoidance, heightened startle reflex, extreme anger, repetitive intrusive negative thoughts, nightmares (when I’m sober but pot controls these), suicidal urges, self-harm urges, and early wake up time.

In a few months I will be at the point where I have been in therapy on and off for 30 years. It has been court ordered and paid for by the state for a lot of my life because my traumas were considered extreme. Society has an interest in making sure I don’t climb a bell tower with a loaded gun. I have “tried” every school of therapeutic approach I could as I went through 21 therapists. At this point I do cognitive behavior therapy (cbt), acceptance and commitment therapy (act), eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (emdr), prolonged exposure therapy, and I use cannabis with a medical card. I have tried a wide variety of big-pharma medications including anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and anti-anxiety meds. I had severe side effects from everything that made it impossible for me to actually live while taking the meds. I am more functional without those medications.

As a result of life experiences I have a great deal of difficulty working with doctors. When I was a child my mother spent a great deal of time telling me I was a “hypochondriac” because my body always had problems but a brief 15 minute visit to a doctor always resulted in them saying “nothing was wrong with me”. Which lead to hours or weeks of being screamed at and berated and sometimes I was beaten if my mother was under enough stress in her life. Later I had other negative experiences with doctors. I have extreme difficulty in learning to trust people who might be able to help me with my help. My experience is they really don’t care about me.

Ok, now to continue down the body. That neck is still a nightmare all the time. I do not have full range of motion through my neck.

My shoulders have been in pain since my first pregnancy. Sleeping on my side for years has caused me to develop a lot of pain all the way through my shoulder muscles. I have several specific big knots that are dull notes of pain all the time with occasional spasms. This pain area stays in the 2-6 area. Mostly down at a 2 with spasms that absolutely hit a 6.

My arms are getting worse by the year because I type too much in bad positions. I’m a writer. I will always type too much. I have muscle pain and tingling up and down my arms and into my hands. I can point at a few specific unhappy spots. I have been specifically diagnosed with tennis and golf elbow.

I have experienced back pain from early childhood. The severe back pain started after a specific trauma at around age 9. I have low grade back pain (4ish) all day every day with times that I have spasms in my lower back that spike up to the 8-9 range. When the spasms happen I have to lie on the floor and cry and wait them out. I get the spasms irregularly. I have fewer spasms when I exercise more so I suspect that it is related to weakness in the muscles but I’m not sure. I have seen a chiropractor in the past and it made the pain less intense but did not eradicate it. I get irregular massages to help with my muscle pain and they can generally bring my entire body down at least one or two levels of pain.

In the front of my body I have a lot of digestion issues. I have had chronic diarrhea for all of my life that I remember. I was probably malnourished through my childhood because I had multiple years where I ate nachos for my free lunch at school and ramen for every meal at home. We were poor and I was alone and unable to cook more advanced food for myself. I was alone most of the time from about four years old. I could boil water for ramen. I didn’t have much more talent than that.

I worry that I have food intolerances or allergies but I am not sure. I know that the diarrhea and abdominal cramping is highly related to stress but I have never managed to detect other true signs of allergies. Wheat and dairy combine to make more than half of my diet and sometimes I have symptoms and sometimes I don’t. So… I’m not sure what that means. If I eat too many raw vegetables I will be in extreme pain. Cooked vegetables are better but I still have pain from them sometimes.

I have had periods of extreme stomach pain for my entire life. That’s where I hold my stress.

I had two hard pregnancies and two rough labors but I don’t intend to have children again. Yay!

I have an area on my lower abdomen where I occasionally get a throbbing feeling. A doctor can verifiably feel the throbbing sometimes but the first test looking for a hernia came back negative and I have not been psychologically able to pursue follow up testing as to why I still have that throb in my belly. My husband suggested aneurism. I don’t know.

I figured out a while back that carbonation causes me extreme pain. I no longer ingest it.

My hips are tight despite me doing a lot of stretching (I do yoga at home by myself–I have a book) but they aren’t what I would consider “painful”.

I used to get a lot more pain in my vagina than I do at this point. I had a lot of internal scar tissue but luckily child birth seems to have dealt with breaking up the scar tissue. At this point I have only occasional pain during sex.

My legs go in and out of pain but that has all been since I started running and it feels like good, healthy muscle soreness. It isn’t like my shoulders or back at all. I get occasional escalation of soreness near my knees but if I try to watch my running form more carefully for a bit that goes away. I am happy to report that my feet only hurt after long distances of running.

That’s all I can think of right now. Have I missed anything I bitch about frequently?