Faithful Companion

 

 

 

 

"Night Visitor"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Decim8

[Intro] - This post is about a lifelong faithful companion, chronic pain. For the sake of family members and people who know me well, this post is not about complaining. We both know that my lifetime of bad decisions has led me to this point.   Chronic pain has been with me since I was a child, beginning at the age of about 14 when I wrecked my back doing heavy (425lb) squats, unsupervised, un-spotted, in the ratty old Lynn YMCA. A doctor visit subsequent to the injury resulted in a diagnosis that there was nothing to be done about it and I would simply need to live with the pain. (As stupid as this sounds coming out of the mouth of a doctor, it fit neatly into previous lessons I was learning in my family of origin - mainly that I was not worth bothering with so just shut the fuck up and get on with things.) Likewise, other injuries sustained in high school level athletics were dismissed out of a mixture of ignorant coaching and/or machismo. Every time I competed, I was in pain of some sort. In adulthood, arthritic hips sang back-up to back pain. It started with noticing that I couldn't stand for long periods of time and then noticing that I couldn't sit in meditation for four one-hour sessions. (Please note that when the hips started going, I was not yet overweight.) I talked about the hip pain with one of the monks at the temple where I practiced.. He counseled sitting through the pain. Hah. By the time I had a hip replaced, the surgeon, reading my x-rays, told me that I should have had the surgery many years before. He said, "People usually aren't able to stand on hips that look like these, much less walk around on them."  In truth, by the time I had the hip replaced, the pain was so debilitating that I was praying at night for God to kill me. Once the hip was replaced, the pain vanished. Overlapping back pain and hip pain is neuropathic pain in my feet. This pain started back in 1993 and is still with me..and not only still here, but positively coming into full flower.. This pain is only an issue when I lay down to sleep. Like clockwork these days, after laying down for a few minutes at night, the pain manifests in both feet in a very specific manner - it feels like both feet are being bitten by an animal. The pain comes and goes all night long with no discernible pattern.. My Boody tradition advises welcoming in the pain, making friends with it.. Sorry - can't do it. It's too intense and too random for someone as unskillful as I am to welcome it and make friends with it or - my favorite - "Be curious about your pain sensations. Really investigate them moment to moment.. " Hah..  I'm working with my Doc to get the dosing right on a drug that is supposed to work on neuropathic pain, but we're not there yet.. There are moments though when I think the drug is helping..  Since this is America, the land of The Bright Side, I'll end with a little bit of bright-side from decades of body pain. It has allowed me to be with pain in others - both emotional pain and physical pain. I get it right down to the fucking ground, man. I know what it's like to just want things to be fucking over. I know what it's like to have pain so intense that all there is to do is to scream curse-words into the void.... I know what it's like for pain to be so fucking bad that it leaves me breathless. I know what it's like down to the cellular level...

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