My eyelids are slow. I am dragging them open but they are heavy and fall closed. Now I can hold them open and I’m on my back staring at a bright ceiling. It is fuzzy. I don’t have my glasses. I must have made a noise because someone has come with my glasses at the …
The pain of public transport
Wow, I haven't posted a pinch for nearly a year! I was open with you, my lovely readers, and myself that pinches would sometimes be irregular. Things happened last year that meant pinches had to take a backseat. One of those things was that I took a creative non-fiction writing course as part of my …
Where there’s one…(1)
A curious feature of chronic pain conditions is that people tend to have more than one. The term "chronic overlapping pain conditions" (COPCs) describes the co-occurrence of more than one of ten named conditions (1). Imagine a Venn-diagram type overlap of the symptoms of each condition. Photo by Paulina Milde-Jachowska on Unsplash The ten named …
Thought experiment
Come along on a thought experiment with me please. Pause a moment and think of Aotearoa New Zealanders, who are we? Note down your description. I'm currently reading Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould. I've read part one (of four parts) so my understanding of the premise …
I was nervous to get the Covid-19 vaccinations
I had my second Covid-19 vaccine yesterday (Pfizer). I am nervous each time I get a vaccination. It is a perfectly common experience to be nervous before a vaccination for a variety of reasons. I feel nervous because I worry about a flare-up of my chronic pain. This concern comes from the fact that a …
Continue reading I was nervous to get the Covid-19 vaccinations
Student guest post: Emily McCarthy
Earlier in the year I was interviewed by a student, Emily McCarthy, writing a creative non-fiction piece on pain management. Emily interviewed me about my lived experience of managing pain as well as research I have contributed to. Emily also interviewed Toby Hall a clinician with extensive experience helping people to manage their pain. I'm …
Nothing about us without us
In late 2020, I participated in a New Zealand Pain Society (NZPS) webinar on why it is crucial to consider lived experience in pain management: "Pain education webinar on "Nothing about us without us" - A coalition of lived experience experts in Aotearoa New Zealand." The NZPS has very kindly made this webinar available for …
Chronic mess?
The trickiness of chronic pain is its chronic-ness. It's ongoing, unending. Auto-correct suggested chronic mess for chronic-ness, that seems sadly apt for how I feel and sometimes how I feel I am seen. Researchers use the words chronic and persistent to describe pain, fatigue, nausea, itch, ulcers, wounds, stress, sadness, fear... The whole Pandora's box …
Doing research on pain
In this big pinch, I'm going to describe some of my PhD work that looked at attention in pain, as a concrete example of the research process to understand why pain makes it hard to think. Words in blue bold text are research jargon; I'll define these as we go along. Science is a team …
My brain closet is full
I said when I started this blog that I wouldn't put pressure on myself if I didn't write regularly. All in all, I'd give myself a B+. Very good performance, but not excellent1. I haven't posted since August and have felt only a little guilty about it. I often feel guilty when I don't do …
Pinches of Pain 