It's My Own Fault and I Should Have Known Better...

Does that ever go through your head?

Not if you got in a car accident or something happened that was completely out of your control. What happened to me was in my control and I will live with chronic dibilitation nerve pain for the rest of my life because of one foolish decision.

My life is upside down right now and the biggest reason is that I LOOK fine. Nobody sees the on-fire nerves that constantly bite at my feet, cause migraines, and sap every ounce of energy from me. Consequently they look at me like, "yeah right, you can't work. Faker. You go to church. You go to the grocery store. You cook meals for your family..."

As I was searching for information on the subject of chronic pain to print so my family might better understand what it's like, I found this website and read Val-Mac/Valerie's blog. God bless you Val, you may have saved my life this morning. I was just at the end of that proverbial rope, ready to let go. I actually laid in the bathtub last night picturing what it would be like to have my life slowly bled out. I could never slit my wrists because I have a low pain tolerance. Yeah, me living with chronic pain and a low pain tolerance.

I haven't taken any kind of pain meds for a number of years because I was on so much dope I almost did commit suicide. The drugs made me crazier than living with pain. When I lived in a drug induced lackluster zombie like existance I did nothing and ate a lot of junk food, gained a lot of weight and loathed myself.

My pain is from a botched back surgery. I had the best surgeon in southern California. Many said he was the best in all of California. Some across the country said he was the best in the nation. He's the guy all the teaching hospitals invite to teach other young orhopedics how to get the job done.

I'd suffered with chronic, albeit managable, back pain since my early twenties. It wasn't until long after I'd had three back surgeries that I realized my initial pain problem was an emotional response to my life. I was in a bad marriage, had a history of being abused and I was a great "stuffer." I had the ever optimistic outlook, never thinking of the bad things of the past, denying that anything from my childhood could possibly affect me as an adult. I refused to go there. I thought I was being stoic. I thought I was invincible.

What initially began as muscle spasms in my low back deteriorated to swollen disks eventually as a result of doing things a woman's body is not meant to do. At least not one who wasn't in the gym every day. I was an energetic go-getter and danced all the time but I didn't have the muscle tone to be lifting the kinds of heavy chemical containers I did when I was in the Air National Guard. I did plenty of other foolish things that fed the process until the cartilege finally deteriorated and bulged enough for a couple of surgeons to say I needed to have them removed and fused. I KNEW in my gut I shouldn't do it. One of those strong, gnawing gut reactions that told me not to do it. But most everyone around me said, "you better have it done or you'll end up crippled." Except one sweet man from my church who every Sunday said, "Annie, don't do it."