Don’t make me go into the whole looooooonnnnnnngggggg story. It’s too boring. And I hate boring. And I hate talking about it, because I hate having to identify myself with it. But here’s the abbreviated version. I was a sick kid. I didn’t have anything super serious, something wrong with my urine tract, that made me spike fevers of 105 regularly, had me popping antibiotics like they were lifesavers (my favorite was and is green) and forced me to miss 65 days of 1st grade. Then once we figured that whole thing out (which was painful and involved), I was plagued with strep throat for many years (years when the medical world thought you should keep your tonsils to boost your immune system. (HEY DOCTORS, I KNOW I’M ONLY 10, BUT DOESN’T IT SEEM LIKE THEY’RE DOING THE OPPOSITE WITH ME, SO SHOULDN’T WE JUST PULL THESE SUCKERS OUT AND GET ON WITH IT?) Once again with the high fevers and the missed school and the antibiotic candy. I finally had those stupid lumps of flesh out, and that was that. And then I’ll just fast forward: My period was awful. So awful, I’d just go to the nurse when I got it and be sent home. I got a cyst when I was a junior in high school and had to have a big surgery to have it removed when I was a senior, leaving me missing six weeks of school, and giving me my first attractive abdominal scar. (hooray!) Another cyst when I was 24, which burst while I was visiting my boyfriend in California, who was studying for the bar. I had to have emergency surgery at UCLA hospital, and stay there for a week. My boyfriend was angry and told me he was going to fail the bar (BECAUSE I KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AND I CAME OUT SO HE COULDN’T STUDY.) My sister flew out to be with me and take me to her friend, the first Marlborough man’s house to stay. Needless to say, I broke up with the shit boyfriend. (and he DID flunk, because sometimes in life, things actually are FAIR). And I should mention that if the flu was going around, if people had colds, etc., I would get the thing for longer than was normal or fair (which I’m guessing is from that constant diet of antibiotics when I was young.) And then at 20, I hurt my back. I had run in high school and college (not competitively, or from the police), but for exercise and fun, and I got sciatica in my Senior year, but didn’t really believe it had to do with my back because I was so young and naive, and sort of kept running, and doing things I shouldn’t have been doing, like lifting up my boyfriend’s niece, and there it was, herniated disc. Well, this thing has dogged me since then. I have been in bed for months on end, been in physical therapy for years of my life, have had to quit jobs, quit fun stuff I love to do. I could make this longer and more involved because it is, IT IS LONGER AND MORE INVOLVED, but I’m not going to. But just know that it’s been a crap thing I’ve had to deal with since I was 2o. A total crap thing. And I’m not going to even get into the infertility years, because, well this is long enough, and we all know how that turned out (I had two amazing kids on my own, after surgery and three years, and well, that’s enough on that, but there is much more.)
And now for the last year, I have had a thing with my neck. A pain that began when I was stuck in bed with the flu for six days last February, and that I thought was just a crick up in there. But it’s not. And here’s what I’ve done for this constant, no-position-I-can-get-into-that-alleviates-it, pain in the neck: personal training, physical therapy, chiropractic, acupuncture, trigger point injections, brachial nerve blocks, and guess what? It’s still there. Still sitting right beside my neck like one of those little devils who tells you what to do in movies when they’re showing you someone’s two sides. The thing about it is, that I can do all my stuff (except for strength training, which is awful), but I am in constant pain. I had one of the brachial nerve block things yesterday, and it hasn’t worked. I don’t feel any difference. Which means, that the next plan to do something called RFA, which I haven’t done my homework yet, but is something where they kind of fry your nerves, probably won’t work either. And so I felt sort of desperate yesterday. Sort of “how am I going to get rid of this pain and how am I going to live with it IF I CAN’T?” And then one of my personal heroes popped into my head. Christopher Reeve. I actually never liked his acting much. I kind of hated that he didn’t have a top lip (God, I’m a jerk), but when he was paralyzed, this guy blew my doors off. And every time I would feel the least bit sorry for myself (which I was doing yesterday), I would think of all the things I could do that brave Christopher Reeve couldn’t do, and I would tell myself to just get over myself and be grateful (see, I’ve been playing this little game for a lot of years). Anyway, he handled his unbelievably horrible situation with such grace and courage, he really did become someone I thought about frequently. I went from disliking him as an actor, to LOVING HIM AS A HUMAN BEING. I was lucky enough to get to see him speak at MIT not long before he died. I was impressed and moved way beyond words, and cried for a good long time afterward.
Anyway, this was longer and far more detailed than I even wanted it to be, but today, I GIVE ALL MY GRATITUDE to Christopher Reeve. He still is teaching me stuff. And I thank him. He really was a super man.
*the gratitude-a-thon 
Toni, my sister is a pain therapist (a real Dr in the family!) and she has told me many times about how debilitating chronic pain becomes for her patients. Because people cannot SEE pain…they cannot always figure out how to deal with it. I hope that among the group of healers that you routinely see — that you have a good therapist as well — psychic pain must be factored in (I don’t mean that in any weird way – I think you know what I mean right?) at the very least for venting!
see day 28: therapy. i’m a big believer. and i’m working with a therapist currently. thanks for the suggestion, though!
i forgot massage in my list. yes, sometimes it helps for like an hour. sometimes it actually makes me feel worse, oddly!
I felt the same way about him. That upper lip. He is amazing and it is great that you got the chance to hear him speak. Have you looked into Therapeutic Massage. I have a client down here who does it and she is amazing. She has worked to heal even olympic athletes. There must be some great people up there who could help. Some things go wrong under stress. Massage is a great healer. They all take time. They aren’t cheap though. Just an idea if you haven’t tried it, but you probably have.