There comes a point with any pain where we can no longer ignore it anymore. It becomes so potent in our lives that we have to scream for help. That point for me was yesterday.
Having dealt with numerous health complications my entire life, I've felt a lot of pain. The pain I've been feeling these past two weeks, however, are by far the worse pain I've felt.
I remember the pain so well. I still feel it actually. My left knee feels like it's been pulled apart and my hands and feet are burning and freezing at the same time and my face feels like I have a sunburn. My thigh feels like there is a major cramp that is moving behind my knee cap where the climax drops as it approaches my foot. My entire body feels like I am in a fire, but I can't disintegrate and all I want is a way to escape the pain.
But they couldn't give me anything to escape. They couldn't fix the problem. Instead, I felt the same hopeless pain that I had when I was in the car accident initially, and cars continued to drive by honking their horns for me to get out of the road as I sat there in tears and desperation. I felt the same physical pain in my entire body that took control of my life following the accident.
When the emergency room physician attendant informed me of my complex regional pain syndrome, a chronic pain condition caused by the dysfunction of the sympathetic nervous system that can't be entirely cured, I wanted to scream. In fact, I did scream. I cried. I broke down and pleaded that there was something else missing from picture. This wasn't the first time I'd heard of it before; a neurologist diagnosed me with the same condition a year ago after I was in a car accident. In an effort to understand the diagnosis, I research it online and I was very disturbed when I found out that CRPS is known as the "suicide disease" because the high levels of pain lead many of the people who have it to commit suicide, that CRPS can more painful than amputating a finger without anesthetic, and that there is no cure for CRPS. The thought of living with that pain for the rest of my life was unbearable, so I convinced myself he was incorrect in his early diagnosis and that there was no possibility I actually had the condition. After all, things seemed to get better and I was able to walk again immunosuppressant steroids. Months passed by and things seemed great, that is until about two weeks ago when my good old buddy named pain decided to come knocking on my door again. As most people do with annoying things in our life, I tried to ignore it until it could no longer be ignored anymore. There is nothing more frustrating than a stubborn pain that keeps coming back even after you thought you got rid of it.
Ignoring the pain doesn't stop it from occurring.
I can't change the pain that I feel and the syndrome that I have. I can't reverse the clocks and prevent the accident from ever happening. Ignoring the pain or situation does not permanently delete it from my life, and often times, the time spent ignoring it exacerbates it.
By questioning where my pain comes from, I can understand it more.
What was the emotional trigger that contributed to my condition?
Perhaps it was the feeling of hopelessness I felt when cars kept honking at me and driving past me when I needed help.
Was there anything else that might have contributed to my feelings of hopelessness?
When the car accident happened, I tried to call my parents and my sister but initially both of them didn’t answer the first time. I opened the car door, and the guy who hit me zoomed right past me. I felt alone and that no one was there to help me. It made me feel I was not a good driver and I worried that it may happen again. I worried that I couldn't trust others on the road, no matter how much attention I gave to my surroundings. As a result, my self-efficacy took a blow to the ground and my happiness was disturbed.
What is the physiological root of my pain?
My sympathetic nervous system has a problem regulating itself.
Normally, the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to the body when there are pathogens or injuries. These signals trigger an autoimmune response of pain and swelling, which help to help us to know when a particular region is injured so we may pay attention and take care of them so they may heal. In my body, my sympathetic nervous system sends pain signals that trigger autoimmune responses even when there is no injury.
My CRPS is a part of me and I can come to love it as something that shapes my character.
I can't get rid of my pain and ignoring it doesn't seem to help. Maybe the best way for me to deal with it is to explore and try to understand my pain from a place of compassion and have empathy for my past-self in the trigger events.
In regards to my physiological triggers:
My body works so hard for me on a daily basis to do the numerous things I demand from it. As a child, it endured an abnormal birth, and throughout my life it has bent in half for gymnastics, built some muscle for karate, and has carried the weight of heavy backpacks all throughout school. I use it every day, all the time, and with all the stress both emotionally and physically I've put on it, I can understand why it stopped working properly. Everyday, I use my small hands with atypical pinkies to write and I sit down and walk and run and jump. My body needs sleep as well. In high school, I didn't give my body much rest because I put a pressure on myself to believe that sleep wasted time that I could be studying and that if I was getting a proper amount of sleep I wasn't going to be able to succeed in the I.B. program because I wouldn't be spending enough time on work. There were numerous times where I ignored much of the pain I felt due to the stress of fearing getting behind and not being able to catch up. As a result, my body gave up. It became very weak and understandably so. My body needs rest, and it needs to find a balance between exercise, passion projects, and academics. I need to love dysfunctional but yet beautiful body which has allowed me to see the world in a unique perspective and notice those who may need help as well.
I want to be able to be strong in my pain and use it as a driving force to fuel my passion to help others.
I can't get rid of the past events that caused the onset of my CRPS and I can't change my genetics which contributed to my inheritance of it. I can however, change my perception of it and the pain it causes me; instead of thinking of it as a curse that will hold me back from doing things in my life, I can think of it as a tool that will help me to connect with others and help me to find meaning in my life; I can use my aches and pains to drive my passion to help others, especially those with CRPS and to notice those who may need help when others may not.
Looking back and researching the condition, I realize there is a large psychological component to the condition, and I learned that it is a neuro-inflammatory disorder that seems to be the linking factor for all of the problems I've had.
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