Exploring Pain
February 19, 2021
I started having sharp pains in my lower back, that extends down my left leg. A few days ago, I was able to easily get up, walk around, walk on the beach… I can still do that, with pain in the background. I have always wondered what it like is to live with pain. Bruce has always had different aches and pains. Once I was in a clinic where they treat accident injured. I spoke to the people around me, and learned they live with constant pain. I knew it must be hard, but I could not imagine it will happen to me one day. I am looking at the “daily challenge” I am given. First was “How to live with cancer?”, how to go through the day with the knowledge of the uncertainty that comes with cancer. The challenge now is “how to live with constant pain?”. I am doing my best to just pay attention, inquire, watch how this impact my mood, and my daily activities. What is my level of tolerance? How strong does it have to be for me to take a Tylenol? How am I to flow with it, work with it, be with it and accept it without resistance?
Yesterday, they put the portal for the Chemo in. We were at the hospital from 9am till 4pm. Everything seemed to be going well. Coming home, all I wanted was to lay down and watch a TV series. I realized I have never done that in my life. I never just sat and watched TV for hours. I have always judged TV watching as not important and there were always “more important” things to take care of on my list. I am looking at this living life from the point of view that some things get into my list of “I do not have time for that” or “That takes too much energy”, or “that’s too vain, waist of time and money”, or other sayings I have taken on as living inside of. What else have I been saying to myself that seemed so “right” and “make sense” and so “me”? A similar conversation I was holding as my guiding judgement, has been “be practical” so anything that was not “in order to” seemed a waste of time. How limiting are sentences like that? How much they rob us from experiencing the wholeness of life? What limiting sentences do you say to yourself?