Pain

I thought the next post was supposed to be on the Mountain Goat Trail at Berry College!

Well, It was supposed to be, but I was asked to consider posting about pain because this is an inevitable part of hiking for me and many of you. This blog is written by myself, but I have to give credit to Kena Womack, my friend and collaborator. She gives me awesome artsy ideas and perspectives as well as motivation to go the extra mile. Today was originally planned as a reconnaissance mission on the Mountain Goat trail at Berry, but life interrupted, and we ended up taking a very brief hike through her pasture to bounce ideas.

We walked about half a mile, picked flowers, took a break. This wasn't necessarily supposed to be a documented hike, but ideas cropped up, the day was beautiful, and we were inspired by the parochial views.

On the way back to her house about 3/4 of a mile, the pain in my ankles decided to go from niggling to full on ablaze. I always have some level of pain while walking, and I usually take steps to avoid this, but we were only going a mile, and I didn't take the normal precautions as I would on a 3- 10 mile hike.

Fighting Pain

I won't discuss with you my medical treatment specifically, but my doctor and I have discussed what I do to prepare for a hike. Needless to say, I just don't get up and decide to hike, I have to begin preparing roughly an hour before I begin the actual hike. Today, I didn't. It was just a walk through the pasture. No worries there, right? WRONG!

There is the ever present pain, there is pain I can walk through, and then there is the ungodly, pain of a flare in the wings waiting to happen. That's what happened today. You know this pain. It feels like white, hot, searing coals have replaced your joints and there is no end in sight and short rest breaks do not help.

I sat at first. I gathered a few ticks in the shade, and regardless of how I situated my ankles, they would not ease in the slightest. You know inflamed joint juice hates disruption, and I stuck my ankles in the air....like that would help (It actually has before, but not during a flare) but it only made it worse. There was no way I could move my ankles to ease the pain.

After five minutes, I got up, picked off the ticks, and began hobbling the next quarter of a mile at a rate of one mile an hour. My ankles became even more angry with me. I could see my car, and began having evil thoughts and fantasies of Kena coming to pick me up even though I was only about 1,000 feet from her house. This is how bad the pain was.

About 200 feet from the house, I gave up again and laid down in the grass. Once again, there was no rest in the pain from my ankles and I was in direct sunlight. After a few more minutes, I got up and hobbled again to her porch.

I ripped off my shoes and contemplated every way to make them feel better. I massaged them; held them against the cool concrete. Nothing helped. As I was sitting there, my ears began to ring. I thought, "Oh Hell no! You aren't going to pass out! Lay back down!" I did, and I didn't faint, but that's how bad the pain was. Kena whipped up some ice packs for me, and I felt a little better after about half an hour and was able to drive home.

Ten hours later, my ankles are still aflame. I've iced all afternoon. I'm not 100 % sure why the pain is so bad today. I did a rather taxing two mile hike in Tennessee yesterday that took it's toll on my knees and hips, but I wasn't in pain when I began. I wasn't in pain the first half mile. It just cropped up.

Unfortunate Truth

I look completely normal, well, actually, that is entirely debatable, but to look at me, you wouldn't think I have severe RA - not yet anyway. The swelling, mostly, isn't very noticeable. I keep telling myself that I cannot stop. I can't give in, but unfortunately, some days I have to. I'm thinking tomorrow will be a day of rest and repair- lots of anti-inflammatory rubs and icing. But I'll be better in a few days, and I can go get my much needed photos of the Mountain Goat trail. I'm really looking forward to it. I just have to know my limitations, and It's something each of us need to discover and understand.

The time on this is incorrect. The hike actually took 50 minutes, but when my phone loses service, the GPS will only time where service is captured and will draw a straight line from point to point. We didn't actually hike that straight of a line