Beyond the veil of pain
After a restless night in a hotel near the hospital, I’m back at home, on my couch. I’ve been trying to estimate if my head feels better, but the relentless pain in my back has made that a challenge. The pain from my back is so acute that it sort of reduces other pain in my body to negligible levels. Which sort of has its benefits.
And so for now, I’m completely undecided on my head. It definitely still hurts, but might be better. It’s just too early to tell.
I’ve spent the day wrapped up in my own thoughts. I’m in a weird place. For 7 months, my whole life has been defined by pain. Every hour has been spent, at least on some level, coping with it. It has infiltrated everything from school to my marriage to my sleep. My life is different than it was 7 months ago.
I’m sure it seems a little crazy, but I’m almost afraid that I don’t know who I am without pain. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want the pain to go away, that I wouldn’t be thrilled to be without a headache, but I’m scared. I don’t know if I remember how to be me anymore. I feel like my life, who I am, has been masked by pain for so long that I won’t even recognize myself.
I have learned how to adapt to this life, I’ve learned how to get done what I need to get done with pain, and it feels like chronic pain isn’t so much an inconvenience as it is a part of me now. An extremely painful part, but a part nevertheless. And so as I wait to see if the pain changes, or in a best case scenario, completely goes away, I wonder a little bit about who will be left behind.
I wonder who I have become, who I am now after 7 months with pain diluting my personality, my life. Am I diluted for good? Am I a watered down version of who I once was?
I know it sounds against all reason to say that I’m afraid of what life will be like without pain, but it’s like all other changes. It’s a mist clouded field of unknowns.
I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know what to expect or what to prepare for. I’m afraid that I’ve spent all this time working to be me again, when it might already be too late. I might be lost, changed forever from those months behind this veil of pain.
8 Responses to “Beyond the veil of pain”
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Welcome! I'm Katie, a 28 year old, full-time graduate student who just happened to have brain surgery in November of 2007 to give my ginormous brain a little more space. This blog chronicles my daily life, from relentless headaches to being a doctor's wife. Sit down, get comfortable and stay for a while.
Hang in there chickie. So impressed you were able to write so great this soon after, excellent job.
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I think that there will be a day that it just happens. You will realize that it does not hurt. And your old self will slide back into place.
I had cancer treatment with resulting pain and fatigue for lots and lots of months. It just became part of who I was. Then, the pain diminished and on the first day that I felt like my old self, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep that night.
You will be surprised how quickly the memories of your pain will become distant ones.
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For me, every life event sees a change in who I am, for others on the outside looking in. Fighting with migraines, going back to university, marriage, the birth of children and the subsequent parenting, moving, learning more about the world – all of these things have changed me and my responses to life. My world is becoming much more grey, rather than the black and white of days long past. I can empathize with things now that I would never have been able to even five years ago.
But the core of me – my ideals, what matters at the end of the day/life, just keep getting stronger. And I bet, that if you strip yourself down to the core of you, you’ll find that some of the accessories of you are what has changed. The basic you is still there. And that’s what counts.
I wish you peace. And no pain!
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Katie, this is a post that goes right to the heart of the matter. I think I am still fundamentally me even though I’ve lived with pain alot. But pain has changed how I live my life. It just makes it more challenging and limits how much I can do. Would I want the limitations gone? Yes. I hope the limitations of pain goes away for you.
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I think we change all the time, every day even, adjusting our perspective on what it means to be “me”… Your pain must certainly have an effect on that “me-ness,” and when the pain lessens or leaves, that too will influence your identity.
But isn’t that wonderful? That you can bend and alter with your life? Though it may be scary sometimes, uncertain, I don’t think change is bad – it’s beautiful.
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It does sort of give us purpose, doesn’t it? I have tried to imagine my life without cancer and who I will be in it…and I have come to believe that I will be who I always have been: ME. It’s just be the me without the wonder that when I make future plans if I will be well enough to attend. Or the me that trusts that all things are possible without the burden of having to walk to through cancer to arrive at where I want to be.
I know that who you are hasn’t changed–grown maybe–but you are still the same girl with the quick wit and bright mind. Just because your circumstances have slowed you down, you yourself are not slow. So, without a headache you will move through your life more quickly, more easily, and more freely. And you will be a better person because of it…because of knowing that you really did your best during an absolutely confining and restrictive environment.
You may have to meet happy all over again…but you will embrace this often elusive stranger and make it the focus of your life. Again.
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I want to come to your blog one day, and read “The pain is gone.” So desperately. Probably not as desperately as you want to be able to say, “The pain is gone.”
And…….you might be a different version of katie……but I bet this “new-ish” katie will be equally kick as as the old one~!!!!!!
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I really can’t imagine going through 7 months of pain. I have my fingers and toes crossed that your pain will be significantly decreased, if not completely gone. You’re awesome, and if you managed to be awesome with such intense pain for so long just imagine how awesome you’ll be when it’s gone!
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