Bounce. Positives.
Sometimes there is just no alternative. You just have to make friends with the pain. Somehow I have never been sent on a pain management course. I went straight down the painkiller route. Escalation into opioids. Not proud. But also not too proud. I knew it was the only way.
There's a lot of chatter over in US a twitter about opioids and addiction right now. For me it doesn't make pleasant reading. The idea that this patch which I need to function currently puts me on an inevitable path to heroin addiction is so ludicrous I don't even know where to start. Let's start with insulted and work our way from there.
I've worked in pretty close quarters with heroin addicts. I've had clients walk in and tell me about the body of their friend that was found last night in an abandoned building, needle still in their arm. Half a syringe of death delivered so efficiently. Horror. Pity. Frustration. Anger. A maelstrom of emotion I will never forget. Heroin is the drug of abandonment and despair. I'm a caffeine junkie. That should be all I need to say.
Yet it isn't. 12kg+ ago I made a choice. It was a stark one. Lose weight or die. The weight wasn't killing me - the frustration was. 200m felt like K2. The despair crawled covering my skin in slick sticky cold shame. Someone asked on FB how I could be the same person who'd tried to ride the 7 Stanes in a day. I wasn't the same person. I was ashes burnt by searing pain.
Pain, constant chronic pain, makes a day or in a week in the hurt locker look like a party. Over a year. It took us over a year to get to the realisation I wasn't depressed, I was in pain. Over another year to work out what was causing the dislocations (7) of my knee. Via zombie drugs that took my mind, took my personality, took my joy and love and light and obliterated them into the galaxies above my head that I no longer stared at with any wonder at all. I was a zombie - a zombie that didn't even want to eat brains. Except the drugs were appetite stimulants and no one told me. Catastrophic combinations.
I asked for help. It took a long time arriving. But when it did it changed my life. It saved my life. I found a specialist who knew the answers and a physio who knew the right questions. I found a physio, truth be told, who was a bit broken too and who was honest about it. Connection made. Trust earned. We talked about my weight after three sessions and I told her honestly what the issue was and wasn't. First time I'd spoken the words. Not the last time. Sent for help. Got the help I needed. 12kg down. Twice that to go. Third of the way there.
A letter arrived from my specialist yesterday. The gold star isn't there but really, it is, written large in the words on the page. Huge improvement. Massive change. Different person. I gave him a card at the last appointment. It said 'thank you for saving my life'. His team did this. They pointed me in the right direction. They picked me up and dusted me off, didn't judge and they listened. They put the stabilisers on and walked behind me until I could do the work myself, all alone.
And I have. Grafted. Gritted. Committed. Worked. Tried.
But still the pain is there. We thought it was all linked to my weight. It isn't. And so I have to make friends with it. Because it is going to be with me for the rest of my life. It will lessen. It will be mitigated in some small way by the building of more muscles more more more muscles. By being strong, stronger, strongest. But it will always be there, a constant companion.
You can't fight something you can't win over. There just isn't any point. So this is me saying okay. Okay I accept. Okay I know. Okay I...don't concede but I do consciously acknowledge.
I will never be pain free again. Unless I wear an opiate patch on my arm for the rest of my life. And we all know that just isn't an option. Stubborn as all hell and twice as stupid. Never give up, never give in. Know what's going on my cross bar. Know what this will feel like. Know the cost. Accept the cost. Time to put the big girl pants on. And celebrate the fact that the zombie is long dead and long gone and I am back to dancing on mountain tops again. Well...I can't quite get up those yet.
But give me time. Just give me time.
#justfingcommit
#nevergiveupnevergivein
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