When I am moderately to overly active one day, I can pretty much write off the next one as a pain day where I am taking extra meds and being totally uncomfortable in any position.

Chronic pain wasn’t new to me as I had been dealing with a bad knee since I was 15 and my lumbar fractures for 15 or so years after that. But the bottom fell out when I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia (1998) and then osteoarthritis (2006). In 2008 I had a full knee replacement that ended up with complications and another level of pain.

When I first started dealing with excess amounts of pain I had the habit of avoiding anything that made it worse (or not better). This was not productive (literally and figuratively) but I would find out in one of the many pain clinics I have attended that it is a…