Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Where Do You Hurt?

I ache everywhere today. I got out of bed feeling like a ninety-year old woman. Yes. Elderly. Last night was another one of those nights where I couldn't sleep through the...pain? Is it really pain? If it's not, why am I not able to sleep through it?
Pain is odd. We use that word "pain" to describe anything which is uncomfortable. We can have mental pain as well as physical pain but again- there is a huge range of degree there. My mental pain may make me uncomfortable in social situations while someone else's mental pain may drive her to constant thoughts of suicide.

In the hospital they ask you what number your pain is, on a scale of one to ten. I think I've experienced ten before. That kidney stone. That labor pain.
But this pain which drives me out of sleep and then out of bed is nothing like that. It's niggling. It's perhaps discomfort to the point where it borders on pain. A two on the pain scale? I don't know.
When I get up and try to walk in the morning the pain is perhaps a three or four? Who knows?
And what would happen if my niggling pain were shot into your body? Would you even notice it? Would you call the doctor? Would you take an aspirin?
If your pain were suddenly shot into MY body would I fall over and cry out? Would I look at you and wonder how you bear this?

I don't know. I know that in the morning and in bed at night, I move into the pain. I stretch my body to feel it and then again to relieve it. I relax and then something happens without me consciously knowing it and there it is again. I am back in that pain place.
And yet, none of this pain sends up alarms. It's not that kind of pain. Not the crushing or the sudden or the piercing pain. Just the dull ache pain that seems to accompany aging.
Is it normal? For me it is. I have it all the time. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always.
You may have pain all the time too. That old injury. The way your spine never did go quite straight but wasn't bad enough to do anything about. The result of the work you do, the way you played, the burdens life has given you to hold in one particular way which has worn down the joints or inflamed the tendons or stretched the ligaments or tightened the muscle. The immune system which has turned on you, biting your nerves with every breath you take.

Who knows?

But I am sure the pain industry is one of the biggest. The medicines we take, the therapies we employ, the acupuncture, the herbs, the yoga, the special shoe inserts, the slings, the braces, the wraps, the hot and cold packs and mostly the drugs, the drugs, the drugs.
I reach for the Ibuprofen, I kick myself for being a weakling. I think of some of you who have chronic, unrelenting pain with never any real hope of complete relief in sight. Sometimes I whimper in my bed at night, quietly, more out of the frustration than of the actual pain (discomfort?).

And then of course the physical pain eventually leads to the mental kind. And as we all know, the mental kind will definitely lead to the physical kind. The depressed are far more apt to report pain than the non-depressed and quite often, antidepressants work well for physical pain for which no medical cause can be found but which is profound, nonetheless.
And people who experience chronic physical pain quite frequently grow depressed and if the correct pain relief is found, the depression clears.

I think it is the nature of being alive to feel pain of all sorts. Look at a just-born baby. She is in pain but then she is comforted and you can see her relax, her mouth perhaps at the nipple and she knows certainly that this life is not all about pain, but about sweetness and relief, as well.
The mother's pain is relieved at the same time. The baby is born, the pain disappears completely. The baby is her savior. And such relief brings bonding. I believe that. I believe the pain of birth has its purpose.

Does this pain of aging? Is it telling us to slow down? I don't know.

Another day after a another night of...pain?
Get up, move slowly, stretch it out.
I am lucky because my pain is not so bad. And I know it. It is a reminder of every row I have hoed, every baby I have toted, every mile I have walked. It's not so bad that I can't still do those things. Thank god.

But when I get up, either from bed or a chair, I move like an old, old person for a moment or two. I hope no one is watching because it looks so clumsy, so ungraceful.
And then I check my mind- how is the pain there? Am I in a mood which is open to my world, my universe or do I have the mind to want to stay in bed and just...whimper?

Not an option.

Get up. The mind holds pain in sleep, it would seem, just as does the body. And just as the body stretches and unknots, so does the mind. It's not so bad. In fact, it's fine.

Get up, move around. Fight gravity again. Until the day we don't which is when we'll lie down for the last time and not get up.
Not time for that yet. Not nearly. Keep moving.
Is your pain a one or a ten? A three or a seven?
Is it in your leg, your hand, your chest, your mind?
Is there a cure or do you just have to shift your consciousness around to include it into your own sense of self?

Pain. Stretch it out, talk it out, write it out. Ride it out. Dance it out. Shout it out?
Keep it to yourself. (My pain is of no interest to anyone else.) Don't make it a litany. Better to make it a poem, a song to dance to.
Might as well.
Means we're alive.
Good morning.

13 comments:

  1. So sorry you have pain at all. I, for the most part, do not. I consider myself very lucky. I feel very impatient and agonized on the rare times that I do deal with pain. It's good that you made me realize again that I am very lucky.

    I love you so.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pain of any kind and of any level is hard for those who have never had it to understand fully the constant onslaught of it. I feel for you on many levels of this....those aches and pains of the what has come on with time from all that we have done or happened to us...I don't have much ache but after hurting my back 9 years ago I don't have the flexibility I once had...it never came back. I have a neck that got injured that the healing is slow...I wish I could feel free and do as a child does in their freedom of jumping and tumbling! These days my pain is of the heart...I feel so for my mom and my family...the pain of loss of the mind for all is awful.

    I hope your pain is relieved by a visit from Owen when he puts his bitty arms around you and plants a wet kiss.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I really like these musings.
    I feel lucky that I have no kind of chronic pain. I am like SB, when I get any kind of pain, I panic. Physical is worse than emotional. I think I'm just used to the emotional now.
    Today I am grouchy from my poison ivy, bubbling up on my fingers, crawling up my neck.
    I'm also having some of that emotional messiness.
    You've inspired me to try to shake it off a little more, rather than falling back into it.
    Thank you.
    Wishing you salve for what aches you too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ms. Bastard-Beloved- Ah- you are still young yet. But it makes me happy that you don't have pain. Love you, dear.

    Bethany- Emotional pain is horrible. Takes a lot of energy to move away from it, doesn't it? Be well, sweet one.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do you think you might have neurofibromyalgia? It seems unacceptable to me that you have this pain and attribute it to aging. I don't think of you as old? But what do I know? I'm just wondering because you are active and healthy and all those things, and I just hate that you have even one moment of pain, not to mention that you wake in the middle of the night with it? My mother suffers from chronic pain, and it's really changed her personality. I will wish for pain-free days for you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Interesting the wawareness we have of our minds and bodies and the aches and pains that ebb and flow. Nancy and I go for a hot tub at the Y after work some days, and always before work. For me, the hot water and just sitting and talking peacably is soothing and healing and restorative for body and mind.

    I feel places where I've had injuries or where a bit of arthritis is trying to nibble on my joints, or where the extra pounds I'm carrying cause pressure on my back and hips and ankles and knees and feet. And I remind myself to love myself because I AM this body right now - I may not always be, but at the same time, I may be, who knows...

    I eat good food, mostly. I talk and listen to music. I swim, I make art.

    And I read Ms. Moon and listen to her same-age voice and life and realize that I am not alone, that other women are pondering their lives and bodies in a similar fashion.

    How very much you are appreciated for the sharing you do, Ms. Moon. Much love to you this fine June morning.
    Mary

    ReplyDelete
  7. There are some mornings when I am just creaky in the joints. I wish that I had fluidity all the time but I work hard. Lately, I am pain free which is good.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have pain. In my hips, where my sacrum pushing into my soft tissue. Sometimes in the morning, if I've rolled onto my back, I can't seem to move for a while.

    The osteopath is the answer, I just can't afford it at the moment. Sigh.

    But, to the osteopath, Ms M. Forthwith.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Only 11 and 1/2 months to go for me.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I hate pain. I have chronic pain thanks to my migraines and some days, it's a mild annoyance and others, well, those are Bad Days. I know it makes everyone around me mad, and that makes it worse.

    I'm too young to be this old and I don't know what to do.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pain and I have been dancing around together for so many years now that I get confused what pains I should worry about any more, or how bad it hurts. I was comfortable with my old pains, the neck and shoulder and abdominal ones, and the neuropathy. Its the new pains that worry me, the arthritis in the joints, the leg pain, the new headaches. I never know what to suck up and what to run to the doctor about. Mostly I suck it up, it's become my habit, and many dr. appts later, there's still no answers, just "try this" medications i don't want to take. Maybe this is fybromyalgia, maybe old age, but whatever it is, it worries my sleep and makes me moody. Like Aunt Becky said, I'm too young to feel this old and so are you too. Do you ever wonder if the constant hot flashing just wears us down and opens the door for new troubles? I worry about the personality changes and try to be normal, but some days are easier than others. I wish you respite, and rest. Sleep is crucial to wellness, says my rheumatologist. Thank you ativan or xanax for the occasional good night's rest. And thanks to you for talking about these things.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ellen- It certainly helped to have that child with me today. And I think about the days when we didn't even have to think about our bodies. When even the stiffness and soreness of pregnancy was a novelty soon to be shed.

    Elizabeth- I have no indicators for that. I think I have just over-used this body.

    Mary- Yes. I think water is magic and I should make more theraputic use of it. I am glad you and Nancy do. Thank-you for the love. I send mine back your way.

    Syd- I'm glad you are too!

    Jo- I keep saying I'm going to try and find one.

    Juancho- Maybe it won't hurt THAT long.

    Aunt Becky- I don't think there is any pain worse or harder to ignore than a pain anywhere in the head. I feel so bad for you.

    Mel- I recognize all your words. I don't know. I do know that doctors don't have many answers if they can't find something specific in an X-ray, a scan, a blood test. Just, yes, more medications. And the damn hot flashes do not help as they do interfere with our sleep and our peace of mind, our comfort. They are the very essence and definition of dis-comfort.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I have a chronically inflamed hip (only plays up for a few weeks, and then lays dormant for a while), and of course the damned mental pain and anxiety which you know so well, and then pregnancy with its comedy pains just now. I feel very lucky, though, because my mental pain used to give me irritable bowel syndrom and constantly inflamed stomach and bowels, which is PAINFUL and which I've hardly had at all since I took that mindfulness course. So I count my blessings.

    It's interesting you talk about pain today. Marie woke up with a sore leg/hip this morning and is limping today which breaks my heart for some reason (probably because I know that pain) but she'd been promised a day at the creche and a two night sleepover at her grandmother's (on her own, at her request, and not a measly single night) so I had to let her go and can't comfort her myself. Which I'm hating. But at least I got a nap after NO sleep at ALL last night.

    So - I am so with you today, Ms. Moon. I hope your pains go away and that you will sleep well tonight. Or today. Because naps are GOOD.

    (Yes, I know I have my own blog. Going now...)

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.