pain

Pain is a great mentor, carving compassion into the soul that once looked upon human suffering with distaste, apathy or pity.

For a full week, my nights and mornings have been a tortured existence. Searing pain rips down my backside, leg, calf and wraps its vicious tentacle around my ankle. I pant like a woman in labor, but eventually I cave to literally crying out. The vice grip is mean, ruthless and domineering.

I am comfortable lying down. I hold my bladder for hours, not wanting to go through the brutality of hanging onto the walls as I wrench myself the ten steps to the bathroom and ten steps back to the comfort of my bed. Isabella is very troubled by me. I try to control my outbursts, but most of the time am overcome and can't.

I finally got an answer yesterday. I have been to the emergency room on Monday, got a new MRI on Tuesday morning and had an epidural steroid injection Tuesday afternoon. I thought that would "fix" me. The doctor had said it takes up to three days for the shot to work. When the pain was just as wicked on Friday morning, I began making calls for help.

I have more than an annular tear, a piece of the disk has popped off and is sitting on my sciatic nerve between L4 and L5. Hence the unending ripping pain. I now have a Monday morning appointment with a surgeon and a second epidural appointment Tuesday afternoon. So, relief should be soon.

Ms. Natural is taking a lot of drugs. I loved the morphine in the E.R. I now understand drug addicts. I was longing for another injection when I woke the next morning. If someone had offered it to me, I would have been on it like a duck on a junebug!

Through the help of drugs, my incredible assistant and the magnificent grace of God, I have been able to work. We did four days work in three as I was off Tuesday for all the procedures. Mornings are beyond difficult, but as soon as I got to work and until the last client left, the pain was manageable. Upon returning home at night, I would collapse and even the pain killers stopped working. But He knows our needs and has given great grace to meet them.

Our neighbors have been so good to us. She has cooked two fabby meals and he mowed our yard. They never asked what could they do. They just did things. Makes me see how pale my love and help has been for people in my life that were going through difficult times.

But Pain's purpose is to indelibly carve compassion into my heart. I have had a lot of Pain. Bad first marriage and divorce, buried my father and my mother, lost a step-daughter to a seemingly hopeless place of unforgiveness, lost half my husband through the stroke and seizures and subsequent loss of his business and his earning potential, two divorces and very costly second wedding of my daughter (happy to say all is well with her and her hubby now!), and some other disappointments and situations where I put misplaced trust. . .

People live with Pain. It has helped me to stop judging, stop looking down my nose. Most of the time. Instead of criticizing, I pray, most of the time.

That is, until TT doesn't bring me my morning food fast enough! (Before you raise your eyebrows at me. . . I can't take any pain meds until I eat and there is no way I could drag myself the twenty-five steps to the kitchen with the pirana biting my leg off.)

God help me live the rest of my life being like our neighbors.