I was hoping to catch up on a lot of things this weekend, most ostensibly straightening out my office and cleaning out many piles that seemed to have spontaneously appeared. Like gerbils, the piles seemed to beget piles. I also had a stack of books that needed to be dealt with, a backup drive to set up, studying and work to do, since two days this week were completely spoken for. I thought things would be easier after getting bodywork.
Friday I went to my naprapath for more structural work. Many years ago I was seriously injured from an accident, could not walk, spent a year being unable to read and comprehend what I read, and a whole host of physical injuries, of which I still deal with the residuals even today. For anyone that has never gone through anything like that, in one word, we are talking about pain. This is chronic pain, the kind that eats at you day after day after day.
Most people who know me also know that usually they have no clue that I am in pain. When it’s excruciating, I just stay home. When I am in public, I suck it up and do not complain. I maintain a positive outlook. I do not wear my physical pain on my countenance. When people ask, “How are you?” I’ve learned that giving them the gory details usually isn’t a good thing, because they will either inwardly freak (Why do I have to hear this?) or they feel compelled to want to talk about it for a prolonged period of time. Me? I can’t be dwelling on it or I’d never get anything done. I reserve the time to talk about chronic and other pain with the people who I go to for medical and alternative healing work.
Part of why my schedule is so busy is that I spend so much time getting alternative treatments. Standard painkillers do nothing for me except make me violently ill. Ibueprofin knocks me out for 2-3 days with a migraine that could put down Al Quaida. I have autoimmune issues that are made worse with what most people use typically to quell pain. Alternative therapies have always been the one source of relief. This is not without expense.
Just my cranial sacral sessions alone would run $95 each week that I go, would it not have been for a break that the therapist provides. Still, it is completely out of pocket. So my normal “week” includes appointments to try to keep the structural aspects of my body in tact, and without it, the chronic pain transforms itself into acute agony that prevents me from doing anything, much less walking to the store.
After my Friday bodywork session, parts of my hips and leg and knee felt better, but often there is a ‘shake up’ of energies and on Saturday my pain level was up from its normal baseline. Still, I managed to clean my office about half as much as I wanted to, and was doing well until I needed to sit down. There’s nothing like a knifelike pain up your back and down your lower back to get your attention. I decided to watch a video on demand on my computer. Not realizing it, I kept shifting to find a less painful position to sit in. The video was great. By the time I got out of my chair, I was not.
By Saturday night, just getting into bed was agonizing. Today is Sunday. I slapped two Salon Pas aspirin patches on my lower back and leg. Acute pain on top of chronic pain can push a person over the top. I have work to do, my office still needs to be cleaned up, and most of all, I need to study, but right now the searing pain in my lower back demands my attention. It’s times like this that remind me that living alone can really make you feel alone and without support. When this happens, it always makes me look at what’s going on in my life.
