The Dark before the Dawn

I’m sitting up at 1:30 am exhausted, knees bouncing and eyes blurry. I’m exhausted. Yet unable to sleep because of the nerve pain throughout my body. This is a relatively new symptom and I’m sick of it already. It seems to be present when my migraine is minimal/absent. And while I am so very thankful that the migraines seemed to have eased slightly, I’m not too crazy about what’s replacing them. Do I want the migraine back to what it was before? No. No thank you and good night. But, that’s not really a choice I get to make anyway. So. Here I sit, the house silent and dark but for the diffuser I set to going and the one light on behind me.

I’ve been thinking about pain a lot lately. It is, after all, my one constant companion  – aside from Abby who wants to follow my every movement – so these are some of my thoughts:

Pain is isolating, my friends. No matter how hard I try to not let it – it does. It pulls you from the world that’s spinning and moving and progressing and puts you in a sort of vortex. Where time speeds up and then seems to stop. Where one breath is agony yet days disappear in a haze.

Pain is deceptive. It doesn’t have to show itself on people’s faces or in their limbs to be felt – to be excruciating. I look as healthy as the next person but ask me to walk up a flight of stairs, carry something heavy or just walk around for several hours and …. well, it’s not gonna happen easily.

Pain is….hidden. The constant refrain of ‘I don’t feel well’ , ‘I have a migraine’ , ‘I’m exhausted’ , gets wearying after a while. So. You stop saying it. But then you find that you’re covering how you really feel. And ignoring new – and painful – symptoms. And then one day your doctor mentions that you seem to be doing better and you have to stop a moment and admit the truth – you’re hiding it. From your doctor. The very last person you should be hiding it from.

Pain messes with your brain. Do you really have a new symptom or are you just tired? Is the difficulty in typing stem from the fact that  you impaled your thumb or that some of your brain-to-fingers skills are dulling? Are your eyes blurry because you’re tired or something more malicious? What about these aches/nerves on fire – are you on the road to more neurological problems or is it just some herxing going on?

~Seriously, you can’t decide what’s legitimate or not. ~

~glorious day, I just realized I’m no longer having to bounce my legs to ease the pain. I think I’m gonna go crawl back in bed under my electric throw (the only thing that truly eases these) and see if I can sleep. To be continued….~

I’m actually going to end this here. It’s been a few days since I wrote the above and I just want to add that one day, however far or near, this pain will end. 

~Laura

Tags: chronic migraines, chronic pain, chronic pain management, chronic pain sucks, jeremiah 30:17, lyme disease