12 Down, 12 Up

My right knee is 'in flare', that is, very painful (rather than just the 'normal' background ache), not reliable in bearing my weight, which in turn affects my balance, stiffer than usual with a reduced ability to bend and painful to straighten fully, feeling like the knee is on sideways and contains a ball of over-tightened rubber bands which break and twang painfully, and generally the cause of much swearing! It wakes me during the night, and between coping with it and not sleeping so well, I feel so tired and lacking in energy.

It's been like this on and off this year and then consistently since mid-August, when I twisted it attempting to stop a shopping trolley with a mind of its own in a blustery wind from wandering off to play with other cars and pedestrians.

I refuse to go back onto oral pain relief, relying instead on the various methods of pain relief I'd found, but even they are sometimes not enough. I looked for information on rest and arthritis and concluded that although 'sit down before you have to' is good advice, the other advice to get 'proper rest' needed a little more exploration. I was also reading about time-restricted eating - restricting meals to a 12 hour or possibly 8 hour window in the day, so I thought I would combine rest and time-restricted eating and see how that went.

The result was reasonably successful. During my 12 hours 'down' horizontal rest, I could do all my horizontal physio exercises, some yoga and mindfulness exercises, check some email and other messages and get some decent sleep and rest to counter nights disturbed by pain.

During my 12 hours 'up', I tried to get everything else done and feed myself.

I've been on this 12 Down, 12 Up for the past six weeks or so. Now, it's time to stop. My knee is better than it was, though still painful. The time-restricted eating has supported my gradual, imperceptibly slow weight loss. I feel well rested. But, I can't do as much as I need to in only 12 hours, things have slipped due to lack of attention and I'm starting to feel like I'm just being lazy (a sign, if any were needed, that my energy levels are back up!)

I didn't discuss it beforehand, knowing that many people who don't live with chronic pain and the resulting fatigue would not understand, nor be sympathetic. Even so, I found it difficult to give myself permission to do this, but I'm glad I did. It's joined my arsenal of potential techniques to manage and live with severe osteoarthritis.