PANDEMIC DIARY
LIVING WITH PAIN
July 11, 2022
Your pain is largely subjective.
Your pain is basically invisible.
Your pain is difficult for people to understand.
Your pain makes other people uncomfortable.
Your pain tests relationships.
Verbalize your discomfort too much and you are a complainer, a burden, a whiner and crybaby.
Hold in your unease and hardship and you are a martyr, a quiet sufferer, and ‘how do you expect anyone to assist you’?
You are told:
“Give it time.”
”Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
”This too shall pass.”
”Here, take two Advil, Tylenol, Alleve.”
”Be grateful. At least you can walk.”
”It can’t be that bad.”
This last comment can be a soul crusher. You would do anything you can to reduce the searing Pain. Rid yourself of the pain. Expunge it permanently. Pain stands in your path’s way like a dark warrior preventing any movement forward unless you are willing to go up against it and risk its consequences. The question is do I live with the pain I have or try something else and add to it. Pain seeks to take over and envelop you, have you need to anticipate your every next move…and your next. Pain denies your ‘carefree-ness’ diverting your Presence to its Existence. Its absorption seeks to be complete. Pain is resolute, interceding you make a sudden, even subtle move to the side, or when you twist in the slightest way, or walking on the shifting sand, or rising from a rocking chair, or removing dinner from the oven. In particular, in the morning when life again rises and greets, as you receive the cool morning freshness and anticipation of sunshine, as you smell the ocean’s salty spirit, as you hear the chirping of the Black and White Warblers, Great Cormorants, Purple Martins, Sooty Shearwaters, and Eastern Meadowlarks, it is then the smile bringing daylight’s aspiration fades, attacked by an electric jolt, a whole-body concussion of torment and I collapse and attempt to draw breath from the excruciating, agonizing affliction.
Yes, this is happening to me. This is now my world. It is called Chronic Pain. However, that says nothing unless and until you realize that the synonyms for the word chronic are: incessant, constant, continual, deep-rooted, habitual, lingering, lifelong, persistent, protracted, sustained and, most disturbing to me, incurable. Advanced degenerative disease of the SI joint or sacroiliac and L5 L4 joint is what the MRI report states. After reading the profile, I had to go to the internet to understand the medical terms. It read like a disaster warning, a foretelling of doom, anguish, misery and finally paralysis.
And then I went to a Physical Therapist here on Martha’s Vineyard.
“Sometimes I think I shouldn’t feel the way I do. When I start thinking this way I tell myself that feelings are neither good nor bad—they simply are. In the midst of intense negative feelings, whether fear, anger, depression, etc., it can feel as though they will last forever, like they will never end. It promotes emotional balance to maintain an awareness that all feelings are temporary, and that they always change.” —From Pain Recovery: How to Find Balance and Reduce Suffering from Chronic Pain.
Upon our meeting, I handed Susan the MRI document. She made believe she was reading it when this two-page document was summarily dismissed, put down in twenty seconds, saying “Let’s see what I come up with and then we can see what this says.” Susan put me through a series of movements to assess whether the pain is originating from the SI joint or from L5 L4 compression. After determining that the source of pain was SI joint, Susan educated me, explaining how my right gluteous muscles have seized placing extraordinary stress on my left glute. She hypothesized that either I had an accident (which I did not) or unbeknownst incurred some form of trauma. Upon reflection, I realized that weeks before I played Pickleball for the first time. It was only after that event that I began to feel the onset of these issues.
Consider this, this same medical report was shown to and read by a chiropractor, a physician, and an orthopedic PA, and each in turn interpreted the data differently. Furthermore, each had a different take on what the report’s implications meant. And, each had advice particular to the orientation of their own practice. Lastly, each suggested they could help, they could work with me and improve my condition. It took for a wise, experienced, multi-disciplinary practitioner to investigate all the available data and come to a diagnosis that would be considered “outside the box” by the traditional medical community. I had sprained the ligaments of my SI joint as a result of the stress. “Let’s get to work”, she said .
I traversed from a doomsday scenario, technical words offering days, weeks, or months or years of extended pain and restricted movement leading to the potential for surgery to a diagnosis that was conservative, reasoned, and hopeful. This is the end of the first day following my PT treatment. I am experiencing the kind of relief that, although I remain painfully sore with infrequent shocks, is so markedly improved over what I have been living through these past two and a half months.
I am relived and grateful. Not knowing what your future holds and projecting from a place of misery and suffering does not bode will for tomorrows. I certainly have a greater understanding of what chronic pain means to those afflicted. Meanwhile, I will continue on with my anti-inflammatory, acetaminophen, and yes, the occasional edible to soothe and round out the edges.
Cheers from Martha’s Vineyard.
