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making my back worse and the pain, others don't, People don't understand you and your pain, Why did I have to be hit by an illegal, Why do some suffer with great pain
Only people who suffer Real pain can talk about pain. Any others, including people who hurt some once in a while, have no inkling as to what it is to Really hurt. The doctors who treat the pain don’t understand it and sometimes act as if they don’t believe it. Real pain will ruin your life, Run your life and make one wonder why they even put up with life just to suffer so badly on more bad days than good.
On Facebook, you will, or at least I do because I run a Christian Facebook page, see a common post. This post thanks God that he/she woke up yet another day. That they have another day in which to live, enjoy life and be thankful. Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful for all that God has done for me/ us; for all the blessings He has bestowed upon us. BUT, waking up is not one of them. For me, and I am assuming for many others, it is the worst time of the day and the worst times of suffering I can remember. All the pain meds and muscle relaxers (that allow one to go to sleep) have worn Completely off and it is, on most days, exceedingly excruciating. It’s so bad sometimes that I have asked God why He allowed me, yet again, to wake from sleep.
I thought that the pain of appendicitis and of diverticulitis was bad, but it no longer compares to what I have to suffer through everyday. This back pain, in two places, is so bad that it has taken my normal life away. I love being out-of-doors, but now-a-days I’m usually stuck to my couch with a pillow and/or an ice pack in my lower to mid back sections. With the appendicitis and diverticulitis, as bad as the pain was, all I had to do was get my wife to take me to the hospital ( with the diverticulitis, it was doctor visits the first three episodes), receive pain shots, then have operations to correct the problems. Then after a couple of weeks of healing, I was almost brand new again. With many, surgery on the back helps, at least for a few years. But part of mine was congenital, causing my injury in ’89 to be worse and it reduced my surgery options to almost nil. That is- 70% that it’ll make it worse or not help at all AND only 30% that it might help for a few years.
On a Saturday in mid April, this young lady without driver’s license was in the process of running a red light through the open lane, while I was pulling out under a new green light. She hit me so hard, I thought I had broken a couple of ribs and my hip bone, plus I just knew my trail Blazer was totalled. I had been disabled for just a few years from a recurring back injury I received twenty years before. The summer months had been my best ones, until this year. This summer has definitely been my worst regarding back pain. I am writing this three days after the chiropractor gave up and cut me loose.
Generally speaking, I have planted all of it before and at least part of a ¼ acre garden plot every year since being disabled, except this one. This year I haven’t even planted one tomato plant or a pepper plant, nor any cukes. I have been to our lake cabin less this year than any since we’ve bought it. I think that I went more this past winter. I can usually get the / our acre of grass cut by push mower in 2, 3 days and cut it about 3 times a season. I’ve only cut part, maybe ¼ of it once, then paid someone to finish it. And the work was not really to my liking. It’s not been cut since and the grass in the garden area is over knee high.
Real pain is a life-changer; the kind that turns your normally great attitude into nothing less than a type of depression. It’ll make an extravert into a severe introvert. An avid church-goer into someone who couldn’t care less about getting ready and going. It’s the getting ready part that’s the worst. Or maybe it’s the trying to keep a good disposition when you feel like telling everyone to go jump, then go home and lay on an ice pack. When in this severe kind of Real pain, one(or at least I don’t) doesn’t feel like having company or putting on any kind of social events. This pain will run your life, cause inactivity, delay or destroy plans; mostly it makes me want to be alone, not to be social, slow down or quit my fav hobby/ sports like gold digging and fishing. That is loss of life to me.
When in Real pain, (I’m going to say we) don’t want to be around people, especially people that feel good. It’s like rubbing it in that they don’t care. And they don’t; at least they don’t care to hear about how bad you feel, and in my opinion, they don’t Really believe you hurt as bad as you do. It’s probably because they don’t understand it for they’ve never hurt that badly. And some just don’t care.
When I first hurt my back in 1990, the chiro Dr. got me going again in a few weeks, but the pain in my lower back would come back for a visit every year and a half or so. Then the Dr. would have to work on me another 3, 4 weeks and back to good-as-new once again. This went on until 2004, 5. That’s when the problem came back to stay, just as I was warned that it would. Every time I had a visit from the back pain demon, the doctor/ chiropractor would tell me that some day it would come back to stay, that every time someone hurts their back, there’s a 90% chance of it disabling this person.
I do thank God that He allowed me to work on another 15, 16 years after my injury, but it is little consolation when I think of the serious pain I’ve gone thru the last 7 years, and then my back injury/pain was made worse by a young woman of 17 who wasn’t even supposed to be here, much less driving (and they think she was texting too). It doesn’t make me want to side with the Latinos who get here illegally. I forgive her, but if they (she and her 2, 3 riders) had not come here illegally, there would not have been an accident AND my suffering would be much less this summer. Plus I would not be dreading the approach of cold weather nearly as much. That is when I’m going to need God, as never before.