Pain

People approach pain so differently.  I think of myself as a child, when I was stung by my first bee.  I remember so vividly how it happened, how it felt.  I was small, maybe three or four, and I was reaching up to the doorknob of the front door.  I was inside, and my mother said something like, "Watch out for the bee!" I turned my head toward her when I heard her voice, but by the time she had finished her sentence, I had already been stung.  The pain burned and filled my tiny hand.  It was unlike anything I could have imagined, it was so terrible and so all-consuming.

I think back on that day often lately.  Back when pain was new and something to fear.  I think of it when I think of how others might feel the pain I feel, as one who has been stung 1,000 times already, or as one who has never been stung before.  Then I ask myself how different a sensation of any kind might be between two different people subjected to the same pain.  How would you feel the pain of touching a hot stove?  How similar or different would it feel to me to touch that same place on that same hot stove?  How would each of us react?

Pain signals danger for people who live without pain, but what about for those of us who live with pain?  

Perhaps this is a question better left to scholars who are granted billions of dollars just to ask hundreds of us that very question.

For me, pain is something I have lived with daily for at least 30 of my 44 years.  In fact, I don't remember what it feels like to live without pain.  For me, it is less like swimming in tar - a thing to just "get through" - as it is like weeds in my yard.  (Perhaps I have used that analogy before.)  Pain is just a fact of life, and like any human, I have limitations.  Some of my limitations just happen to be pain-related.

Today I am thinking about pain more than I do most days... well, at least I am feeling like pain is more at the forefront of my thought.   I told you about my falling over a month ago and bruising my tail bone (coccyx, for those of you in anatomy class).  Well, I did a good job of it, and although I felt it was getting so much better, after sitting in chairs and on couches today that are not of the right shape and the right... softness or hardness (I know there is a word for that, but my mind is blank as to what that word might be...), my poor little coccyx, I believe, has wagged it's way out of alignment again, and is causing a great deal of pain.  Add to that the resulting pain radiating throughout my rear end, my hips, down my legs and up into my lower back, and pain, usually a dullish overall reminder that I have moved too much or not enough, has made itself the center of my attention.

Now, I may have mentioned this pain study in which I have been involved.  Well, I have been trying several of the techniques they have asked me to try to see if my level of pain decreases.  Unfortunately, I find my pain so severe that I am a bit distracted.  And now it is almost three in the morning and I have yet to go to bed, fearing that I may not sleep well.  This, of course, is a silly way of thinking as the longer I stay up, the more time I am spending sitting in these chairs and the more I am aggravating my whole body!  So I guess what I am trying to say is that I should go to bed now, and write more on pain some other day when I feel better and am not so absorbed in my own pain.  Good night, and know you are not alone in your longing for a pain-free day... or even a pain-free hour.