Living With Pain

Okay, for those of you who didn't bail out after reading the title, here goes -

Ever since I got a pinched nerve in my neck many years ago, I’ve been living with pain. It varies from mild to intense, and I’ve learned to live with it. Number one adjustment is - accept that it’s there and avoid thoughts of, “Oh woe is me”. 

With this recent onset of lymphoma my pain’s gotten a bit worse as my stomach is joining the “party”. One new problem is that for some reason a nice long walk has often been an excellent remedy for my pinched nerve pain. Maybe it loosens up the muscles. Now this option is gone because around the block is about the best I can do. Energy permitting, getting engaged with something (guitar, computer, book, t.v.) continues to be a good remedy, but I have to be very careful to get engaged without tensing up my shoulders etc. in any way. I have an electric massage machine that helps sometimes. In any event, I’m hanging in there and am not taking hydrocodone every day, though knowing I have some helps on days when I don’t go for it. Any drug also works better if you use it every third day or so instead of every day.

As many of you have probably learned, if you’re tired enough, you can fall asleep when you’re in a pretty good deal of pain. You have to accept that it’s there and then try to focus on something engaging (yeah, and maybe take some aspirin and a diazepam). Personally, I will arrange guitar tunes, mentally diagram football plays, or replay scenes from movies or sporting events (last pitch of the World Series - letter high strike on the inside after five or six sliders just on or off the plate low and outside. I called it. You can ask my wife). In my younger days I would go for sex fantasies to go to sleep, but around age 60, this option seemed to take too much effort.

Once asleep, dreaming can be quite an experience. I’ve never had a dream (at least that I can remember) where I’m actually fighting the pain with a sword or fists, but I have had ones where I’m sparring with the pain in a spy versus spy kind of strategic battle. More often, though, the pain will take the form of  a suitcase or backpack I’m lugging around. Or it will be a nagging reminder of a bill I forgot to pay or some errand I have to attend to. I’ll be playing out my dream telling myself, “okay there is this annoying burden, but I’ll deal with it later.”