Pain

Last night I finally gave up trying to sleep around 4:15am.  I was in complete agony all over my body.  And it wasn't just a dull ache everywhere.  It was a relentless random series of stabbing electrical pains, coupled with an intense hurting in my joints.  It was hard to find one that wasn't affected.  My neck and right arm was the worst.  But they were joined by throbbing in my left arm, my knees, my toes, my hips.  It was awful.  I couldn't find a position to lay that didn't set up a new set of painful zaps.  When I say electrical, it felt like someone was taking a hard narrow object that was hooked up to a power source.  It would suddenly jab into a spot on my body and push harder and harder in.  It was excruciating.  The natural response when someone comes up and jams something like that into you is to jerk away.  So, even though there was no physical implement of pain, my body kept jerking away.

After going to the bathroom, I went and sat in the recliner.  In recent weeks, sleep has become painful for me.  A large part of it is the fact that I have lost so much weight that my body does not enjoy sleeping in the position I have used for most of my life.  I don't have an enormous gut under me, so now my body contorts into strange painful positions.  I still haven't figured it all out.  Sometimes I will go sleep in the chair because it offers some relief.  Last night, it was a desperate move in response to a completely unexpected attack.  I would doze for 45 minute stretches and then pray when I couldn't sleep.  I didn't know what else to do - and I decided to make my unexpected wakey wake time useful.  (I wanted to write on the blog then, but I couldn't even lift the computer.)  After a couple of hours, I went back to my bed and hoped to sleep in there.  For no reason, I started shivering like crazy.  My teeth were clattering together so loud it woke Heather up.  She had no idea what was going on.  I just laid there and cried and she rubbed my hand.

We have tried to figure out what was going on.  I had done a lot of cleaning yesterday - scrubbing the bathroom floor, cleaning the shower, vacuuming the house.  (I tried to convince Heather that it was proof that cleaning was hazardous to my health.  She didn't buy it.)  That was probably a big part of it.  The exertion coupled with my Rheumatoid Arthritis - which has already been flaring due to stress.  For all we know, the "Supermoon" also got into the act.  Whatever the combination, it was the single worst RA attack I have ever had.  Normally I bounce back during the day.  The intensity of pain and the electrical jolts ended.  But my arms, knee, and neck are still very painful.  I've had to give up control more than I want to.  Heather had to drive us around.  She had to buckle my belt.  The kids have had to open bottles for me.  Now, twelve hours later, I still am slowly lumbering around the house.  Everything takes twice as long and hurts twice as much.

I'm sure that the two of you reading this are feeling great sympathy for me.  As they say, "you feel my pain."  That is one of the things about pain.  It is universal.  I would argue that it is one of the most universal of feelings, if not the most.  There are people out in the world who don't know how love feels.  But everyone knows what pain feels like.  I may not know exactly what you are going through.  But I can guarantee that I can recognize your pain.  The pain of loss.  The pain of loneliness, of betrayal, of grief.  There's the pain of a relationship ending and the pain of one that won't start.  We all know those feelings.  They are common across cultures and religions and gender and age.   Pain is very real and very recognizable.

In the midst of my physical pain last night, I was also feeling heartache.  It's a different kind of pain and I don't know which is worse.  With physical pain, you can put ice on it or take Advil.  With heartache, there isn't much that can be done . . except . . . wait.  I was hurting for the people suffering in Libya.  I want them to be free.  My heart ached for the people of Japan.  We are so consumed in the nuclear crisis there that we aren't thinking about the massive loss of life.  When all is said and done, there may be 20,000 people dead.  That is incomprehensible to me.  Entire families wiped out.  It kind of came and went with just a blip, but the news talked about when they discovered 1,000 bodies at one point.  They said the shock and grief was so bad at the sight that it just unhinged people.

I know I have written on some of these themes in my last few posts.  But it is a big part of what I am dealing with right now.  People all around us hurting.  The most we open ourselves up to them, the more we feel their pain, the more we hurt.  Eventually, it feels like we are going to overload.  It was like my body last night.  The pain was so all-encompassing and random and cruel that my body just starting shaking and trembling.  It couldn't handle it.  The same thing can happen with empathy for others.  We can find ourselves lost in their agony.

It is a hard road to walk.  It is easy to turn away and not care.  We joke around and forget about it.  After the Japan tragedy, you had people making crude twitter posts about it.  (Gilbert Gottfried was the most famous offender.)  I was equally horrified by the crassness of his joking.  But, I know that I have done some of that stuff before.  It may not have been as heartless or public.  I know, though, that I have been guilty of turning my back on a problem because it was "too hard" to stomach.

Last night I realized something.  In all of my agony, there didn't seem like a lot of hope.  I couldn't find a position that made the pain stop.  There wasn't a medicine or a treatment to end that scale of problem.  You know what the most comfort I got was?  When I climbed into bed and Heather reached over and just softly rubbed my hand.  It didn't stop the pain.  It didn't perform magic.  It didn't stop the tears.  But that brief genuine loving touch showed me that at least I wasn't alone in the agony.  It offered hope.

We can't fix Japan or Libya or New Zealand or the poverty and unemployment in our own country.  I can't generate enough money or buy enough houses to make things better.  And my little $10 text to the Red Cross seems so small in comparison to the scope of the agony.  But in that moment, our small gesture is like rubbing their hand.  It is showing them they aren't alone.

The Beauty of Perspective

It has been a rough few weeks at the elaborate and elegant Staples Resort and Spa.  The kids, who usually are pretty healthy, have gone through several cycles of illnesses.  Heather actually had to reschedule her last exam because she missed so many days during her bout with the plague.  We went down to visit my mom over Heather's spring break.  During that trip the two older kids and my mom were stricken with food poisoning.  Gabe had a massive allergy attack there, which segued right into a combination of ear/sinus/eye infections.  And then, something finally got me this morning.  I spent more time on the toilet today than anywhere else.  (Oh, was that too much transparency?)

Other things have been jumping onto the pile as well.  Financially, its one of those tighter stretches.  As I shared in a previous post, the Libyan situation has kept Defender in stasis.  The move to Orlando is coming up closer and closer - and with it the expenses of getting established there.  And, to top it off, one of the fish the kids won at the Strawberry Festival tried to commit suicide last night by jumping out of it tank.  We saved it, but it is pretty obvious it isn't quite right.

The temptation today, especially while feeling sick and weak, is to wallow in my miseries.  And ordinarily, that is exactly what I would do.  I would mope and feel crummy.  My focus would quickly zoom onto myself and no one else.  Today, though, I have actually tried very hard to keep perspective.  Things that are going on around me have certainly helped.

• We have a family friend who has spent the last two days at the hospital trying to discover what is wrong with their two year old boy.  He has been non-responsive twice in the last two weeks and no one really knows what is going on.  The parents are helpless, just waiting on doctors to perform a miracle.
• This year, my sister has had her gall bladder removed.  Her son has had an appendix attack that nearly led him to need surgery.  That turned into massive bowel issues, complete with horrible pain and missing two weeks of school.
• My brother is struggling to find a job in the lousy economy.  He goes to work at 4:45am every morning and still is coming up short.
• On top of all of that, I am not doing this alone.  Today, Heather shuffled her schedule and came home early so she could take Gabe to the doctor.  She also took care of organizing dinner and correcting the kids.  It always blows my mind when I think about how hard it is for a single parent to walk this journey alone.  I have several friends who are in that boat.  It is always a quick perspective check when I think of their struggles.

Then we have the international situation...

• Libya is something that is constantly on my mind, obviously.  Even now, when it appears the government is reclaiming power, the realization that those poor citizens are going to go back to the same problems.  And it probably will be worse, when you think about it.  Anyone who was even remotely involved in the rebellion will no doubt be killed.  And Gaddafi strikes me as a punitive sort.
• At least a half dozen other countries are going through upheavals as well.  The idea of revolution has taken root and is spreading throughout the Middle East.  In each of those, there are lives lost as the people fight for freedom.
• Our soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq - disarming bombs and helping those countries get established.  I have several friends serving in the military - leaving their families to help fight for people (who may not even want them there).  
• New Zealand just suffered a major earthquake that obliterated an entire major city.  This has kind of been lost in the other tragedies.  Thousands of people were left homeless and national treasures were erased instantly.
• Then there is Japan.  It is beyond horrible to try to fathom what just happened.  In an instant, a powerful country's fortunes were turned 180 degrees.  The death toll will probably end up near 10,000 people.  It is estimated that damages will top $10 billion.  Entire cities were erased.  And now there is the looming horror of a nuclear disaster.  Being a child of the 70s and 80s, nuclear accidents are something that has always terrified me.  Watching this plant disintegrate before my eyes, I can't even imagine how awful the Japanese people are feeling right now.  

Perspective.  It is a good thing.  Actually, when I think about the stuff going on all around - close to home and far away - it makes me feel pretty silly to get so worked up of a suicidal fish and excessive trips to the bathroom.  As I sat there last night, hearing my little guy crying and struggling to sleep and worrying about the fish, I started to pray about all the stuff that has been swirling.  It didn't help me feel better.  The reality is that I felt a little worse.  There is just so much pain out there.  It is helpful to remember that my pain is not the only one.