To Change my Relationship with Pain
Since I was young, pain has been a part of my life. Deep aching leg bones lit up like lamp posts in the dead of night. My mom remembers having to cajole me into sleeping, rubbing burning camphor into my skin until it took the pain away. Growing pains, maybe? Was it an early manifestation of fibromyalgia that I would be later diagnosed with? More likely. Migraines, screaming and pale, hiding away in darkness until the pain was gone. Falling into a fitful sleep while I waited for the pain to pass. My migraines started young, rocking me with white-hot pain, they kept a tight grip on my head until they eventually faded, disappearing into the mist of a dizzy brain, only to return time and time again. In high school, I herniated a disc in my lower back. On the MRI it looked like a fat slug. How could it be causing me so much pain? A fat black slug, that was pressing on my sciatic nerve, oh yes, plenty of pain. Pain that raced down the back of my leg like fire. At times feeling like my skin could peel off and leave exposed muscle and nerves angry for lack of skin. That herniated disc sat on my sciatic nerve until blood vessels grew around it. It would make the later surgery harder than it needed to be.
Why did it take so long? Because nobody would believe that I was in so much pain. They tried epidurals, in which I endured the pain of needles sliding between my vertebra. They didn’t work. I tried physical therapy. That didn’t work either. After surgery, I was left with a bright red scar down the middle of my lower back, ugly and twisted and bumpy.
Later on, the muscle pain started. Wracking my skeleton with pain that felt like the press of a bruise, except all the time. Pressing, pressing, always pressing. Fibromyalgia said, my doctor. She gave me nothing for the pain. Why was it such a surprise I turned to marijuana then?
Somebody should’ve stopped me.
Somebody should have said something.
Somebody should’ve said, “You just had a psychotic episode, maybe turning to drugs isn’t such a good idea.” But nobody thought I had schizophrenia. Every doctor labeled me as hysterical, as only a woman, at worst having a personality disorder, maybe PTSD.
I don’t blame anyone, but I wish I had stopped myself.
By the time I accidentally ingested synthetic marijuana it was already too late.
It took away my pain but sent my brain completely out of control. I think I would’ve rather lived with the pain.
Would I have gone on to develop schizophrenia anyway, regardless of the drugs? Maybe. There is no way to know. People generally regard marijuana as pretty safe, but I would argue from where I stand now, that for the developing brain, marijuana is a huge risk.
Pain has always been a part of my life. Two years ago, I re-herniated the disc in my lower back. That old familiar pain is not unlike an old toxic best friend. I had a second surgery. Now I have a cyst on my S1 nerve root, and I’m waiting for my neurosurgery consult. What a familiar place I find myself. I wonder if this means another surgery? I’m exhausted from being in pain all the time for so long. But I never turned back to drugs to cope with my pain. Right now, I’m trying to change my relationship with pain. Just like I learned to change the relationship I have with schizophrenia. My pain management doctor says half of my pain comes from how I choose to cope with it. My bone pain is rare these days. My migraines are all but manageable, my fibro has greatly improved, though I still have bad pain days where I could swear I’m black and blue, but that back pain haunts me and I hate it.
“Are you telling me I have to learn how to not hate it? It gets in the way of everything. Of cleaning, of exercising, of gardening, of living, of sex and intimacy.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
But I wonder how I’m supposed to not hate something that very clearly hates me, that is out to ravage my body and steal my soul. How? How?
I’m learning.
Goodness, I’m learning.
