September is Pain Awareness Month continues and there are so many excellent programs being held around the country and online to help educate people about the impact pain can have on a person’s life and to spread awareness about pain in general.  For further information about these programs and how you can participate throughout the year go to www.painfoundation.org

In my last, very long, posting I told you about how pain has changed my life and the challenges I faced in my efforts to succeed.  Today I want to tell you, in a much shorter posting, about how pain affected my self-confidence and emotions from a very young age.  Did you ever ask yourself if maybe the pain you feel isn’t as bad as you think?  Could you be exaggerating it for attention?  Or perhaps you are just crazy and it is all in your head.

I started asking myself these questions by the time I was 14.  And continued to ask them until I finally realized that it didn’t matter who else believed me or what anyone else said, my pain is real and getting worse.  I don’t know exactly when I came to that conclusion, probably in my late 30’s or early 40’s, after several spinal surgeries, years of pain medications, a variety of treatments from injections into my spin and physical therapy to spinal manipulation under anesthesia. Yet, I was still in terrible pain and in need of pain medication to manage it.  I began to collect copies of MRI’s, CAT scans, and all the other tests I had, and they showed the damage in the spine. Obviously there was something wrong, my pain was real and I wasn’t crazy.

Every time a doctor or other medical professional would question either the extent of my pain or if I had any pain at all, I would hurt, cry, and try to convince myself it wasn’t bad so I wouldn’t have to bother my parents or cost them anymore money—money I knew they didn’t have and that they needed to support the whole family. I had four siblings and I knew they were tired of hearing that I hurt, so I would tell myself I could just ignore it if it’s not that bad.  Right?  Doesn’t that sound logical?

I know now that a 14 or 15 year old can hide terrible pain from her parents and siblings about as much as she can convince people she is the Queen of England.  I know that at times my parents would get frustrated with me, with the doctors, and the whole process of going to doctors and getting nowhere.  Why not, I was frustrated, too, but I began to feel guilty on top of everything else.  Not only did I worry that I was crazy and making up pain, but now I felt guilty about all the trouble and money I was costing my parents. The only place I had any success was in school and that’s where I turned my attention. I knew early on I wanted to go to college, and then either to law school or become a social worker, and I never doubted I’d do it.  I just never thought it would take me as long as it did.