Game Changer

Do I betray my soul by thinking my body has betrayed me?  After all, my soul (assuming I have one) doesn’t give a fig about my body in terms of whether I won the genetic lottery or was born with a lemon.   It just wants to advance spiritually and it needs my body and mind to do that.   Kind of a mish mash of spiritual thinking but there you have it.

I spoke with Ted this morning.  His hospice experience hasn’t been great so far.  The comfort part is a better than being left in the hands of the nurses at the home, but they only come twice a week...  And they keep lowering his pain meds, claiming he’s “too thin” for them to be effective.  So he’s in agony all the time.  I mean, he as before but now it’s even worse.  We cried together on the phone.

I get so mad.  I changed my patch today and I swear, it isn’t making a bit of difference.  I am in agony.  I am most of the time, with the exception of a one day reprieve every 8 or 9 days, if I’m lucky.   But when it happens, all I can do is feel scared to death of what I’ll feel like the next day.  Because the pain comes back with a vengeance.

This is such a struggle for me. I have to be knocked out silly to get any relief, but the constipation issues keep me from taking too much of the breakthrough meds.  I pray for strength, I pray for relief, hell, I even pray for faith.  It all falls on deaf ears it seems.

The question of “being punished” for some deed I did in some other life haunts me.  But part of me thinks it’s just a crap shoot, with me getting the crap, or the lemon, in the genetic lottery.  No wonder I’ve never been a big lotto player.  I wanted my blog to be a positive experience for people, but it wouldn’t be honest if I kept it light and lively.  I try to add music and make it fun, but mostly it’s a true account of the day to day life of someone in chronic, intractable pain.  And you know what?  It doesn’t really matter WHY I’m in this kind of agony; tumors for me, some other horrible disease for someone else.  I read about people with other health challenges, some a lot worse than mine, but it comes back to being in agony.  One cannot function in agony.  It’s all I can do to stay here.  I wish I didn’t have that hang up but I do.  With luck, I’ll get brave one of these days.

In the meantime, I’ll take my drugs, do my drumming, read, watch movies, take care of Oliver and pray it will end soon.  Actually, it’s way too late to be soon.

The stuff we make up (including religion, afterlife, G-d) is enough to drive me ballistic.   I mean, people’s experiences that can’t be explained (including mine) could be anything.  We attach meaning where there may be none.  And once we find out (we as a civilization) for sure that all those experiences originated in the dark corners of our brains, it will be the biggest game changer since life began.