Your pain...

Imagine a life free of pain, to go for a walk without fear of the rain, without a worry about a cold breeze, staying outside as long as we please, able to drink or eat whatever we want, with no pain, not even a spike. To clean our teeth last thing at night, without suffering the usual plight, to kiss, to hug to laugh or smile, to be able to sit and chat for a while, to go to lunch and meet with a friend, without our pain bringing it to an end, to continue working in our chosen career, to live without our constant fear, to just wake up and feel no pain, to love without that ball and chain. We get used to the pain and we try to cope, but we also try to live in hope that a miracle cure will come soon, which will take the awful pain away.   ~E. Sirrell

Someone posted this in the Trigeminal Neuralgia support group.  I like it, save for the last bit.  Because I do not hope for a miracle cure.  I don't believe in miracles.  And I know few are working on the condition.

I find it ... strange ... how my life has morphed into one defined by pain.  I mean, I mostly just think of my life bound by chronic illness, but I have pain every single day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  SIGH.

I cannot escape it, although I am fairly adept at enduring it.  Not the worst flares.  No, I've been rather blunt about failing there.  But pain is now woven into the fabric of my life.  It is my new normal.  And, sometimes, I do not even think of it.

I do tend to dismiss most of it, always comparing it to the devastating pain of bone cancer.  Back when I was a young slip of a girl and volunteering with a hospice group in Waco, I had two patients dying of cancer.  Both were in so much pain that the drugs they were given only blunted it.  Both were barely lucid ... really ... not lucid. They were lost in their pain and the fog of the drugs.  When I think of severe pain, that is my standard.  Who am I to complain of pain then?

So, perhaps it is a good thing that I spotted this online today.  It is true.  All pain matters, because it matters to the one experiencing it.  It is good to be reminded of this.

When I was that young slip of a girl, I went off to Africa as a missionary.  When getting my medical records together, it was determined that I needed another MMR vaccination.  I got all of my overseas shots at the county clinic to save money, something a friend taught me.  In fact, the day I got my MMR, her toddler did, too.  That was the most painful shot I have ever had.  I went around telling all the moms there that the shot was horribly painful and not to punish their kids for wailing.  I was on a MISSION to teach parents about the pain in an MMR shot!

I might bewail my misery here and on my Facebook page (where I do hope for support), but I am no longer the advocate for pain.  I am too weary and melancholy to be an advocate for anything.  But I shared the quote above because it is, in itself, a sound bit of advocacy.  It paints a better picture than I ever could how chronic pain can affect every facet of your life ... ways I think the average pain-free person would be hard-pressed to imagine.

And the meme is a good reminder for us all.

Including me.