I had a round of injections Friday that have left me in a lot of pain.
I’m trying to manage the small little pile of pain meds I have left while figuring out other options until this pain wears off.
Yeah, it’s a bummer.
I’m trying not to get anxious and uptight, but it’s there for sure.
I know the pain will subside. I just flew from Chicago to Spokane non-stop w/ minimal pain five days ago.
It’s distracting and isolating. It makes it hard for me to be engaged in life and think about other people, other plans. It narrows your field of vision and limits your options. It ruins your life as a normal life w/ normal life patterns and rhythms.
My Dad had a lot of this going on in his life.
I think he did the best he could in some ways and not in others. He had limited options for treatment which is why my mom tried hard to find solutions. It overshadowed our life and my childhood, much of which he couldn’t control.
His selfishness and greediness and general lack of maturity compounded things. It could have been better or different if he had been a different kind of person with the same bad luck physically.
So I’ve tried to be different than that with what has been dealt to me. I think I have.
Yeah, it’s interesting to write about this full circle.
I just took a half a pill of pain med. I can feel the pain subsiding. There is nothing in the world like that feeling. It’s a feeling of complete relief and almost euphoria. I understand why people get hooked on drugs. I don’t know why I never have. I’ve never taken medication when I didn’t have pain but I’ve also never taken it and not been happy I had the option.
When my pain was so bad that nothing could touch it, the amount I was taking was toxic. Smaller amounts provide the relief I need to just keep going.
All of this has been part of my life. I have one other friend who has had to manage pain like I have. Hers has been worse in many ways as she has other referring pains from her original source of pain which is pudendal nerve pain.
You really do have a different kind of life, and it’s hard to be in pain and then also be the one trying to get yourself out of pain. It’s like having depression and trying to get yourself out of depression by trying new things you’ve never done before which isn’t what you’d gravitate toward if you’re depressed.
These things often feel like double-whammies.
So here we are. The weekend w/ the kids was good but I of course always end up with things to worry about. I need to be encouraged by the good and let the other go or deal w/ it, one or the other. I’m not sure how we’re doing as parents of adult kids w/o a tribe or elders to guide us. We’re doing the best we can with a situation that’s developed that feels untenable from a healthy community perspective.
White culture focuses on just your own family and you’re not embedded in a larger community to be a part of and also take care of. It’s pretty anemic.
We were incredibly fortunate and successful at finding two or three communities for the kids to grow up in: church group, school, family and hiking friends. That is a great deal more than most American kids.
I don’t feel we have that now in any way. I feel the lack and I feel the lack of that feeling w/ the kids. They have moved on and were never super close to their aunts and uncles. So it’s back to us again without a larger community to be nested into or have ceremonies or celebrations with. I know there are other communities doing some of that in the US but also finding it not connected to church is hard here as well.
The indigenous communities are still doing that all over the world, and here in the US to some degree. Modernization pulled us all apart and separated us. I hope I can find a way to get back into a community in some way.
I also wouldn’t want to be in a tribe per se without rule of law. With my sexual abuse background, I have heard many stories of the abuse that happens in tribes w/o any recourse. What happens if the chief of the tribe is an abuser? Or one of the elders? No I’ll take rule of law with all it’s problems any day.
A nice counterpoint to that would be councils of elders that can help provide guidance, but are not the final voice of the law.
So this is what my head looks like on any given day. The meandering loop through pain management to our kids to society and back again.