Pain

I've been thinking about pain a lot lately. Probably because I have been in it for so long now.

Several months ago I did something to pinch a nerve in my back. The pain is inside my left shoulder blade. Originally, it hurt the most when I was either driving my car, or sitting at my desk working (at work or at home). Can I just say? As a working mom, those were two EXTREMELY difficult times to deal with pain. Working at my desk and driving in my car are UNAVOIDABLE, and also completely necessary. Whatever the nerve is that is pinched, it also has caused a facial tick. If I raise my eyebrows, there is what feels like a fish hook in my bottom lip that causes it to quiver. How the two are related is completely beyond me, but they are.

For several months, I tried my best to work through the pain. I would shift on to one hip, sit up on one leg. In the car I would lean back like a low rider just to remove the hot stabbing pain in my back. Ideally if I could just have avoided the positions I had to be in to drive and work maybe it would have gotten better, but it wasn't an option. So for several months I suffered through.

Pain- a huge hot knife like feeling in my back and painful tingling down through my arm. I would take 15 Advil a day to suffer through. When I started getting bloody noses, I decided I better bite the bullet and go see the chiropractor so he could possibly help.

Come to find out the nerve in my back was pinched between a displaced rib and a displaced vertebrae. My doctor was a little shocked about how out of whack things were. So he aligned things back and I have since been to see him nearly a dozen times getting "adjusted."

The fact is, in many ways, things have only gotten worse. This nerve that was pinched has now been released, but the compression of it actually limited it's ability to feel the discomfort. Now this damaged nerve has to heal. And instead of the relief of circulation being cut off much of the time, blood is flowing fully to it, and it hurts all the time.

Sitting and driving still hurt. The knife is a little smaller, and the numbness has subsided considerably, but the pain is still just as intense. But now I can no longer find relief by standing up and moving around. The respite that laying down used to bring doesn't exist anymore, now I wake up and I ache constantly. The hurt is constant.

It's sort of interesting to me how when you remove the source of the pain, it didn't actually bring relief to it. I thought once the doctor adjusted me, things would get instantly better, but it just hasn't turned out to be the case.

I'm finding it not to be just the case in the situation of my back either. Heart pain can be very much the same way. Even when you remove, or move away from the source of it, the pain can linger. Sometimes it can even intensify.

I don't believe that time has the ability to heal wounds, but I do believe that sometimes time must pass for healing to take place. So I guess in both my body and my heart, though adjustments have been made, and sources of pain removed, it's a matter of time before the hurt no longer besets me.

For my body I'll take an Advil and put my salon pas pad in place. For my heart, I will say a prayer and rest in the knowledge that God is with me and for me, and will see me through.