Is your health in a downward spiral because of constant, severe pain?

Obviously I cannot cure you. But I am sure that if you follow my advice you will feel a bit better.

You have been in pain for such a long time that the pain is now only a part of the problem. There are many other problems that have developed as a result of the pain.

Constant pain is very tiring; it takes away your energy and it disturbs your sleep. It makes you less able to take proper care of yourself. It naturally dominates your thoughts and you give less attention to your eating. The tiredness makes it harder for you to think of suitable meals and harder for you to prepare them, and the tiredness and pain sometimes make eating a chore rather than a pleasure.

Here are some of your extra problems:-

Insufficient food causes you to have even less energy and this leads to you bothering even less about proper meals and so you are on a downward spiral of less and less energy and less and less suitable food. You then get health problems caused by malnutrition. These may include anaemia, which could be helped by eating some red meat.

The tiredness, the anaemia, the pain and insufficient food lead to insufficient exercise. This inactivity, and the shortage of calcium and vitamin D all lead to some demineralisation of your bones, especially, perhaps, of the wrist bones and the spine. This makes it more possible for a fall to result in a fracture. So if you drink a pint of full cream milk a day (my personal opinion is that full cream milk is better for you than skimmed milk because it tastes nicer and it is more soothing) and try to to be a little more active, this will help to protect you from further avoidable bone-weakening. A very simple exercise that is good for wrist bones is to squeeze a rubber ball several times a day. If you haven’t a rubber ball I’m sure you can find something similar and softish to squeeze in this way.

Concentrate at the moment on food. Look on eating proper meals as the most important activity of your day. Think of it as your job. Even if you do nothing else, you must do that. Your body and your brain cannot serve you well if they have insufficient nourishment.

I think you would also find it helpful to get some multivitamin/multimineral tablets from Boots or Holland and Barrett or somewhere like that and to take whatever dose is recommended on the pack (do not take more than the recommended dose). They just have a bit of all the vitamins and all the minerals in them and it helps to prevent you from being short of any particular nutrient. Always take tablets with a good draught of water. Your appetite should improve as your nutrition improves.

With improved nutrition you will feel a lot better, and hopefully the pain will also be reduced. Most chronic pain is also reduced by eating less salt and salty food, if you can manage that.