Lets talk about pain

Where to start – pain, pain, pain, my constant companion.

I used to jokingly say to people younger than myself, don’t get old it hurts but in actual fact at some level I ment it . I have found that gradually, increasingly I have felt more and more pain as I got older. Mostly my pain has manifested somewhere in the body but often enough it showed up mentally and emotionally.

Pain is a slippery customer, hard to deal with, difficult to describe and even harder to eliminate. As is well-known humans do almost anything to avoid any kind of pain. We take many kinds of medications to soothe the body, mind and soul in fact we are so creative that we are able to avoid, mask and deny the merest hint of suffering. It takes a lot of energy, all this covering up and running away and it only stands to reason that, as we get older,  it starts to catch up with us.

Being a bit of a soul searcher from way back I recognise that pain in some form or another is part of everyone’s life journey. Not that we like to acknowledge that too freely and the average person might think it foolish to dwell on such ‘stuff” too much. After all that might mean to rummage around one’s past and unearth events and feelings best left alone. What god can it do to regurgitate the past, isn’t it better to let sleeping dogs lie? Well, NO I say emphatically and how do I know that ?

Over the years I have looked back for a variety of reasons, to clean out the skeletons in the cupboard so to speak; to learn about myself, to understand myself, to understand others, to heal old wounds, to find a place of greater peace and so on. Whilst I achieved many of those things,  pain kept creeping along my path, the uninvited guest at my party.

My life was often like a bucket, springing a leak here and there. I diligently patched each leak as best as I could; sometimes using my own accumulated wisdom, sometimes enlisting the help of others. Gradually the leaks were getting more serious and the bucket had to be repaired to avoid permanent damage. Despite this constant  maintenance it looked as if the bucket would soon be ready for the scrap heap.

I am not exactly sure when the rot truly set in but it seemed that after I turned 50 years old my body wanted to fall apart. I began to have more and more physical problems that required attention. I spent time in hospital, I spent time recuperating, only to find that the next issue was just around the corner. Each time I thought that would surely be the end of it I found myself sitting in another doctors’ surgery describing a new ailment and new pain. I don’t consider myself to be a hypochondriac but I was feeling almost embarrassed when I made yet another appointment. In true Swiss fashion I told myself that I needed to rise above it all and push through fatigue, illness and pain and keep on keeping on. Of course this was also helped by the fact that I was very entrenched in a profession that very much encouraged if not demanded a kind of martyr mentality. Self care, what nonsense is that, selfishness more likely, after all a good minister id there for everyone else and doesn’t dwell on mere pain. That may be sarcastic but I truly believe that church culture, no matter what may be said officially,   encourages the glossing over of pain of all kinds. I shall get to that in more detail another time but for me matters came to a head about 10 years ago.

I found myself seriously injured through work and was consequently forced to retire much earlier that I had ever anticipated. I managed to limp along for a little while but suddenly it was not only the body but the mind and soul which began to hurt. How utterly confusing, suddenly I screeched to a halt on every level and the pain became excruciating. A stiff Bourbon here and there, a glass of wine or two, a tablet or two – dangerous ground. Chronic pain, finally a diagnosis that made sense but was more slippery than ever. The treatment was mostly unpleasant, more medication, more fuzziness, more frustration and depression. Life was becoming decidedly unpleasant as were my moods and thoughts. No amount of distraction and severe self talk could lift me out of the painful doldrums.

For a while I saw several doctors, most of whom disagreed about the diagnosis and the treatment and to this mix we added physiotherapists, counsellors and well-meaning friends. How utterly confusing, no wonder I felt as if I was in the spin cycle of a washing machine. Somewhere in that mix there was a wise female voice that recommended I connect with a pain clinic to deal with the actual issue of pain at every level of my being but that wasn’t heard by most of those involved in my ‘care’.

More surgery followed, more physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, anti-depressant medication, pain medications, a few more Bourbons and some herbs in the mix. I felt as if I was slowly coming to the end of my tether or following earlier imagery the bottom was just about to fall out of the bucket when I was finally referred to the Northern Private Pain Clinic for an assessment. Like a good story I will have to leave the next chapter for another instalment. My body clock tells me it is time to rest and so I shall, until it is time to talk pain again.