PAIN
Pain.
Searing.
Hot.
Throbbing.
Dull Ache.
Radiating, creeping, its tendrils traveling, encompassing more and more of the landscape of my physical body, taking over and planting roots.
Pain sucks the life out of me.
It interrupts my sleep as I toss and turn resembling a rotisserie chicken seeking to find a minimal pain position.
This works until it doesn’t and I untangle blankets, my therapeutic pillow, and land in one of the four positions that allow temporary relief.
Temporary relief that doesn’t encompass a full sleep cycle.
Everyday activities, especially driving and walking require careful maneuvering with a slow measured mindful often limping gait.
Standing also presents challenges.
Thankfully, I can still practice mindfully, slow, strong gentle Yoga and with awareness, free weights. Cardio, once part of my daily, active, pain free life is out of the question. I move how I can move. I use the cue learned from my teacher, Senior Kripalu teacher Rudy Peirce-Start at the beginning of sensation.
Like many, my experience of pain is complicated. We live in a culture that teaches us to avoid pain at all costs including mental and emotional pain.
Even practices of Yoga and attitudes of wellness culture that preach “good vibes only” can bypass physical/mental/emotional/spiritual pain. These cannot be separated and even as I as a practitioner, life long student and facilitator, welcome all the feelings that encompass the human experience, even I find here my own internalized attitudes about ableism, aging, and healing.
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Pain and Injury
I fell on black ice off my porch in the late winter of 2020. I flew into the air and landed solidly on my right hip on the concrete. I could tell nothing was broken so I treated with ice and topicals. Besides, the local hospital, full of Covid patients, had a morgue in the parking lot. Nope. Not for me.
The summer of 2021, on vacation with husband and friends at Rehoboth Beach, I fell (slowly) off a bike and landed, guess where? That’s right my friends, on my right hip. I wanted to walk into the ocean and let the salt water sting and heal my brush burns and absorb my humiliation. Instead the park ranger came to gallantly rescue me and friends rode bikes home to come and pick me up.
An X ray a few weeks later, showed a deterioration of my right hip, already in the beginning stages of arthritis, significantly impacted by these injuries. I resolved to increase my strength here, walking, core strength building, stretching and strengthening my hip flexors.
This worked until it didn’t.
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Fibromyalgia and Neuroplastic Pain
I have a history of significant childhood (and adult) trauma. Instability, chaos, unpredictability, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
I am blessed to travel non linear paths of healing and integration ( lots of therapy and somatic healing) that have allowed me to meet myself with compassion, to explore my body and mind as a place of refuge and sanctuary rather than a battleground.
Even as I recognize the healing path as non-linear, it felt like a betrayal of my Being to have my body literally break down as my Dad became ill and eventually died. Although my Dad didn’t participate in any of the abuse above, our relationship was complicated.
My body started experiencing tremors and spasms at night. They would start on my right side, migrate to my left and eventually my whole body would tighten and spasm. The only thing that alleviated this meant standing and slowly walking. So while my household slept, I slowly walked through my quiet house, a hand on my heart and a hand on my belly, breathing deeply, resetting my nervous system. On a good night, this happened once. Other nights, I walked and paced more than I slept.
My whole body felt sore all the time. Mostly my legs and hips, but this pain traveled freely throughout my body, claiming territory after territory.
After tests and many doctors appointments, I received the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is associated with childhood trauma.
The neuroplastic pain results from a miscommunication between the brain and the body’s pain signals. In my experience, my body constantly braced, constricted, spasmed and contracted. My legs felt detached from my body. My appendages in general were disembodied and my torso contracted inwardly.
I knew I needed bodywork and asked a trusted friend for a massage in my home space using my Reiki table. As expected, I had a pretty significant emotional release and started shaking and crying.
And something else happened.
When I was a young girl, around 6-7 years old living in a chaotic, unpredictable environment, I often imagined an older woman who was kind, paid attention to me with joy and tenderness. I could never clearly see her face but her presence calmed me. During the massage, I saw myself as the young child turning to the woman who reached out her hand to me as a child. This time I saw her face.
The woman was me.
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Healing and Acceptance
Healing for me doesn’t mean strong feelings immediately resolve. I spent some time and continue to with pain flare ups with the fibromyalgia grieving for myself as a little girl, grieving the loss of a father throughout my life.
I also marvel at the wisdom of the psyche and how hard our nervous system works to protect us.
What supports and helps integrate my nervous system and reduces the neuroplastic pain has been restorative yoga, pranayama (yogic breathing) and other somatic practices of sound and movement. Also eating clean, no processed foods. Also, bringing into my awareness other sensations and experiences other than the pain, the sunlight streaming through the window, the sound of the birds, the smell of tea, the warmth of my favorite mug filled with tea and the perfect way my hands encircle my beautiful mug made by a potter friend.
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Hip Replacement Surgery and Ableism and Another Layer of Acceptance
So, this situation with my right hip continuing to deteriorate is a reality separate from neuroplastic pain, although it can easily trigger a fibromyalgia flare up.
Honestly, as a Yoga teacher, I have taught and supported students with a wide variety of conditions ranging from paraplegic to Charcot Marie Tooth, Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, cancer and various auto immune disorders and chronic pain and As a parent with a now adult child with Spina Bifida who navigates in a wheelchair, I face my own internalized ableism.
I never saw myself as someone who would experience chronic or structural pain. I expected, without examining this belief, that due to my healthy, active lifestyle, that somehow I would avoid disease and/or injury. I thought that the most intense part of healing and integrating trauma was in the past and my practice of meditation and yoga and ongoing therapy were enough to maintain mental and emotional wellness.
I see the arrogance in that now and it humbles me greatly as right now I can’t walk my dog to the next corner and back.
I see the journey really and truly to healing trauma is ongoing, never ending and there are always layers to the psyche that invite greater and deeper healing, even if that seems to be impossible to face.
So, hip replacement surgery………….recent X rays showed a significant deterioration of my right hip from the first X-ray after the second fall in 2021.
It is time.
Hip Surgery and What is Next- My Plan and Non-Attachment
Well, in an ideal world, my cortisone shot I received a few days ago will kick in (hasn’t quite happened yet) and along with a prescription dose of Naproxen, I will have some relief from pain for a few months.
Ideally, I would revisit that in July and have the surgery mid December.
As a self employed person with no paid time off, this is a period where I don’t have any work.
I also want to schedule the procedure before 2026 even if the cortisone and Naproxen buy me a year or so as I cannot count on accessing any subsidies for my health insurance in the Marketplace with this administrations agenda.
I am practicing non-attachment and am open to having this done whenever possible if the above plan doesn’t unfold.
What I Don’t Need and What I Do Need
- I don’t need pity
- I don’t need unsolicited advice
- I do need to work and save money to prepare for unpaid time off for recovery.
- I do need folx to show up for virtual and/or in person events.
- I do need folx to sign up for my newsletter. (Via my website-scroll down the home page).
- I do need you to send me funny memes and some comic relief.
- I do need your love, your kindness and support.
- I do need a couple locals who want to help us with our raised garden beds this summer and harvest from this effort for your own kitchen.
- I do need reminders to not isolate and wall myself off.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. There is so much going on in the world, our country right now and I deeply appreciate your time and attention.
