The upside to all that experience is it makes me a more mindful patient. I know what a slippery slope pain medications can be for pain that really will never go away, so I stay away from narcotics. I can see now why people turn to heavy pain medications who do not have this insight. Chronic pain is kind of a hopeless plight and is consuming. I had no idea until I was in the thick of it, so I thought I would share what it is like to be a chronic-painer with you.
Most of the time it is like a small pebble in your shoe on a hike when you can't stop. You re-adjust your steps, you shake your shoe, but no matter what, it can be felt the whole time and is aggravating. Is it the worst pain ever? No, but let's just leave that pebble in your shoe for a year and you aren't allowed to take your shoe off. Your upbeat attitude starts to falter. Every once in a while, that pebble turns into a goat head and you have to stop, but only for a moment. On your hike people will stop with you for a short period of time, but really, everyone is on a nice hike and you just encourage them to go on. You assure them it will get better and you will try and catch up. The goat head settles back down into a pebble, and you hike on. You try and catch up to your friends, but you realize that you just can't keep the same pace anymore.
This is how it goes for the rest of your hike - pebble to goat head, pebble to goat head. No one really sees the debris in your shoe and while they love you, they question what is really going on. They also wonder why you can't just "power through it"? Maybe if your foot was tougher it wouldn't bother you? Maybe you are just too sensitive and need to learn to "cowboy up"? You have tried both, but now you are tired and your spirit is drained. You wonder if you will ever know what it feels like to have normal feeling shoes again. And then you begin to lose heart. This is when you start to mourn the loss of your own health, and it can happen at any age. Even at 37.
Right now I am two weeks from knowing if a knee replacement will help. If it is not the right answer for me, then I am as mobile as I will ever be. No more hiking, snowboarding, running in the park to get a kite in the air with Natalia. No more long days at Disneyland, no more walking on the beach because I can't tolerate the uneven sand, no more high heels to look sexy for my husband, no more dancing at the holiday parties and possibly at Natalia's wedding. My knees will get worse, not better. These are the things I am mourning and how my life is changing.
I have had people with very good intentions tell me "Remember, there are people way worse off than you." To which I found this lovely quote "Saying someone can't be sad because someone may have it worse is just like saying someone can't be happy because someone else might have it better." Everyone's journey is different, everyone's pain is her own. My pain never stops me from fixing my hair or doing my makeup before I go out. I really don't want people to know how terrible I feel on the inside. Of course, my daughter can read my face like a cheap tabloid magazine and knows right away whether my day is bad or not. It kills my heart not being the mom I want to be right now and that I can't hide it from her. In one of her school papers she wrote for me to get a new knee as one of her goals for the year. I cried and cried right onto the construction paper.
In two years I will be a nurse practitioner. The good news is this has brought more empathy into my heart and will help me be a better care giver. It took me 9 years to max out being jaded and prejudice, but only one year to help chip all that hardness away, so I guess it was a pretty good trade when you think of it. Hard, but efficient. Once I'm done mourning my high heeled shoes, and so forth, I'll revamp the things I do with my family, rest more than any 30-something ever should have to, and realize there isn't a damn thing I can do differently for this pebble in my shoe.
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