Living with pain
I try to be normal. I want to normal. To live like I imagine everyone else does. Go about my daily tasks. Work. Clean house. Do the laundry. Sleep — oh, sleep … I miss that most of all believe it or not.
I’ve got several health problems that all involve pain. Migraines. Fibromyalgia. Chronic fatigue. Arthritis. Each involves some degree of pain. Like most people suffering from these issues, I have good days and bad. And a lot of days when I can just ignore it and get on with life.
But, this past month has been a surplus of bad days. I work at home — self-employed mostly and so I make my own schedule. But this month (July 2018) has been just one thing after another. The weather affects my migraines (as the barometric pressure moves up and down rapidly) and we’ve been having one storm sweep in followed by a few nice days and another storm. There was nearly a week of heavily overcast days with intermittent showers — I mean the kind where you might as well been in the shower stall it was raining so heavily.
Add in the fact that due to the war on opioids that pain medication is hard to come by. So over-the-counter medications have to do but mostly they barely touch the pain. So, this month it has been a lot of time just meditating — or staring off into space hoping that I could push the pain just a bit off to the side and get on with things. Some days I’m more successful than others.
The upshot of the this is that this month I’m disappointed with myself. Usually, I’m so much better sometimes I can even hide it from my husband so he doesn’t worry. But this month, I feel like I didn’t succeed at all. I whined — a lot. I managed to get some work done but mostly this month was a complete waste. Most days there weren’t enough spoons in the county to do the bare minimum of what I expect of myself.
In fact, I surprised that I managed to actually get out of bed, check on the chickens and refill their water, walk down to the mailbox to get the mail (1/4 mile each way), and do some actual proofreading and writing. Managed to attend meetings and take notes and follow up later with what I promised to do. Maybe I did better than I thought now that I write it down — but, I feel I could have done more — I should have done more.
Maybe it is the “shoulds” that I didn’t do that cause me to feel disappointed in myself. Maybe I just need more spoons. I’m trying to keep up the exercise regime in spite of it all as that is really what helps the most to keep me going. I can’t afford to give up — but every day is a challenge. And, I know that others are having a more difficult time than I am so I slog on each day.