Pain and What It Teaches

This whole experience has permanently changed my relationship with pain and understanding how and when it impacts my life.

1. Did you know that areas of lost sensation and numbness develop their own type of pain? You can't feel it but everything aches and if you are asked to pinpoint where it hurts, you can't. My grandmother had an accident years ago and laughingly joked that after losing one of her toes, "it itches, but I can't scratch it." It's that way for me. I feel the pain but nothing makes it better. It aches and I can't stop it. Over the counter painkillers don't touch it either, you just have to wait it out.

2. Emotional pain and loss hurts more physically than recovering from brain surgery. I'm talking deep aches in the furthest and darkest corners of your heart and you swear that it would hurt less to have your heart removed from your chest. In fact you would pay someone to do just that. No amount of crying or sleeping seems to make it better and you cant see any way around it. So, you take a gasping breath and walk through it hoping and praying that there is hope on the other side.

3. Codeine based medications numb you out so that you feel nothing, but the internal ache is still there. I had to get rid of some of my pain killers because that feeling sounds so good on days when everything hurts. I now understand how seductive the idea of not hurting anymore can be.

4. If you don't tell people your limits they don't see you hurting. Even those closest to you will continue to imagine things are fine if you are still up and moving even if every part of you is screaming in agony. I mask and cover up, sometimes too well. I have to tell those closest to me when I hurt.

5. God will walk with you through any fire and He will carry you when you can no longer go on.

God bless and keep you.