Over the past few months, it has seemed that for every step I take forward in fighting this pain, I’m forced to take two steps back. I’ll finally be able to go out to playgroup or to lunch after a doctor’s visit, feel great, and then come home and have to sleep and cry and lie still on the couch in pain for the next 48 hours. The good days are wonderful, and essential for keeping my spirits up, but the bad days that follow are absolutely horrible.
Today has been a bad day. I was up with Widget at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up in his big boy bed and was afraid. He needed company, so I climbed in there with him for reassurance until Daddy came in and relieved me at 4:30. Since then, it’s been a hazy mixture of sleep, pain meds, TENS, lidocaine, and overwhelming, back-crunching, teeth-gnashing pain. I can’t get away from it. If I try to get up to do some laundry, or get a glass of water, or help Widget with something on the other side of the playroom, a sharp stabbing pain shoots through my spine, punishing me until I relent and lie back down.
Almost as bad as the actual pain is my growing frustration with my own limitations. All around me, family members are playing with and entertaining my child. I hear happy voices from the next room all day long. My husband spent hours today cooking us his famous lasagna (ohmygosh, it’s good!), and he’s cleaning up right now. Even the dog is helping, here and there, or at least he’s being part of it. Me? I can waddle into the room to keep people company, but when the spirit moves them to another room, I can’t keep following. I can help my mother change the laundry, but I can’t stick around to fold. I can kiss my husband on the cheek and thank him for all his work, but I can’t do more than clear the table after dinner, much less bend down to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I can come downstairs to visit with family, but I need someone else to go up and get my medication when it’s time to take it again.
I feel helpless, like a child, but not the child that lights up the room when she walks in. More often, I feel like the sullen child in the corner who is often present, but not fully part of the activity of the moment. I’ve always felt bad for that child and wanted to comfort her, but I’m now finding it impossible to reassure myself that this is only temporary, that things will be back to normal, the new normal, soon, and it’s even hard to hear it from others. I’m becoming more and more frustrated with my current limitations, and it makes me want to talk about my pain, or to lie still on the couch while the world swirls around me. There is so much wonderful happening here during this magical holiday season, with family supporting us every step of the way, but I find myself always on the taking end, and that is perhaps the hardest thing for this strong-willed child to do. To accept help gracefully is difficult. To accept it over and over again, knowing that I’m straining the resources and patience of the people who mean the most to me, is incredibly difficult.
Some days are more difficult than others. This has been one of them.
