a really sad day

I’m planning to hire someone to finish a small digging project that I can’t complete due to the pain. I’m hurting so much that I called Mark (my orthopedist) today about the possibility of a partial shoulder replacement on the right side. The one he did on the left 37-months ago has just recently reached what I suspect to be its full potential for improvement, and I would anticipate just as slow a recovery on the right side, but my condition certainly won’t get any better if I don’t have the surgery. A full replacement would be more likely to alleviate more of the pain (I have no thought that I will ever be pain free), but it would also restrict the kinds of work I could do, and I had rather be in pain and able to work than to not be in pain and not be able to work. My problem now is that the pain is so great that work is out of the question, and I am also concerned that I have now worked myself into this level of pain a few times, and I am beginning to worry that I will eventually do so much damage that the increased pain level will become permanent and maybe even unbearable. I’m also concerned that Mark either won’t operate at the hospital my insurance will send me to, or else he will pronounce the joint too far gone for a partial replacement—and maybe even for a full one (joints can deteriorate to the point that the only option is to either do nothing or else to fuse the bones). Then again, I might feel better in a few days, and say no to another such nightmare.

Today is a lovely day, and as I look out the window at a project which I can’t finish, I am practically in hysterics. If it was work I hated, I could live with hiring someone, but how do I live with giving up things I love, one after the other? Depending upon one's perspective, there are many valid ways to interpret life, but certainly one of those ways is to regard it as a slow—or sometimes fast—fall into ruin succeeded by death, and that’s the one that is before me at the moment.

Sidney, the baby that I call my grandchild, was here yesterday. As I reflected upon the growth she has experienced in her first two months, and the growth that she will continue to experience for nearly three decades, I envisioned her as a flower that I will never see completely open, but I also remembered that her growth will someday turn to decay, and she too will increasingly fail until her life finally comes to an end. I then recalled a song that goes, “he not busy being born, is being dying," and since it's from my favorite movie, I put it up top. 

What to do? I ate some pot, but it made things worse. Pot quite often does that. I never know what it will do from day to day or even from morning to afternoon, but when it’s bad, it can take whatever is bothering me, multiply it by a factor of ten, and rub my face in it as if into fresh shit. Getting high on pot should not be taken to imply that the user will necessarily have an enjoyable experience.

The picture is of my Grandpa holding me in 1950. While holding Sidney, I remembered that picture, and I knew that, despite his dour expression, he must have felt with me somewhat as I was feeling with her, for I know he loved me. There is something so hopeful about new life that I can't imagine anyone not loving it, although my cat, Brewsky, certainly gives an excellent imitation.

The UPS and DOWNS of chronic pain

I just came from the doctor, and he and I agreed that things are going splendidly following my shoulder replacement twelve days ago. This could mean that I’m one surgery away from being relatively pain free. Why, then, do I feel sadder than I’ve felt in a long time. To try to understand, I wrote “The UPS and DOWNS of chronic pain.”

THE UP: People will give you a lot of sympathy. THE DOWN: Sympathy has the shelf-life of bananas.

THE UP: You find out who your friends are. THE DOWN: You discover that you don’t have many.

THE UP: You will find friends among other people who suffer. THE DOWN: You wonder if you will still be friends if one or both of you stops suffering.

THE UP: You’re excused from making a lot of the difficult decisions about life that normal people make. THE DOWN: You don’t get the rewards that come from those decisions.

THE UP: You get to take a lot of drugs that have the power to make you feel pretty good at times. THE DOWN: If you’re in a lot of pain, you can hardly tell you took them, and in no time at all, you will have to take enough drugs to kill a normal person in order to feel even a little high.

THE UP: You always have something to talk about. THE DOWN: People don’t want to hear it.

THE UP: Pain is a school that teaches you that you’re tougher than you ever imagined. THE DOWN: The tuition is outrageous.

THE UP: You don’t have the energy or the desire to create a social face. THE DOWN: Your newfound honesty will often look like irascibility to everyone else.

THE UP: You accumulate an impressive store of medical knowledge about obscure conditions and treatments. THE DOWN: No one gives a damn.

THE UP: Against all odds, you are buoyed along by hope for a brighter tomorrow. THE DOWN: Like a sandcastle on the beach, your hope has to be rebuilt twice a day.

THE UP: No one can tell by looking at you how much pain you’re in. THE DOWN: Even when you try your best to describe it, no words are adequate.

THE UP: Your family will insist that you’re not a burden. THE DOWN: You know they’re lying.

THE UP: If nothing else stops the pain, there’s always death—if not now, then someday. THE DOWN: A life spent looking forward to death isn’t much of a life.

THE UP: Someday, you really might get past the pain, and then you will enter into a land “in which all things are made new.” THE DOWN: You will discover that this new land comes with a whole set of new problems.

In summary, even if I escape this pain, I know from within my own body how vulnerable I am, and how hard—if not impossible—it is to fix some things. How, then, can I ever live without fear, and how can I ever live without guilt that I don’t suffer when so many others do? My first real peer support was from Michelle at http://thesmallgodsshallbemyjudge.blogspot.com and Twinkle at http://elysianreveries.blogspot.com. Michelle will probably always hurt and has been near death a few times, and Twinkle is now in so much pain that she seldom writes anymore. For me to feel good when they cannot is to betray them.

Today, I heard on the news about the street fighting in Syria. Those who are wounded are afraid to go to the hospital because the police can pick them up there and murder them. They are therefore taken to private homes where they lie in agony in a city without water or electricity. Then there are the women in Africa who are shunned because of pregnancy-related incontinence; there are the abandoned pets that whimper in cages at the pound; there are the beasts of the forest that face starvation when they grow old; there are the women who are sold into sexual slavery; and there are the children who are forced to grow up in violent homes and on violent streets. So much suffering! So much suffering!

Please don’t think for a moment that I imagine myself to have risen to some exalted position from which I KNOW pain because ALL I can ever say is that I know what I have experienced, and whether by some imaginary measuring stick, it has been a little or a lot, it has been sufficient to change me, and, at this moment anyway, I just wish I could go back to the way my life used to be, because I don’t feel refined, and I don’t feel enlightened; I just feel broken, and I don’t think I will ever feel whole again.