Pain

The hardest part about living with chronic pain is that it never goes away. Doctors can prescribe medication, you can pop advil twice a day, distract yourself etc. No matter what you do the pain manages to creeps up your spine and send a shock waves through your nervous system. You want to scream in fear as your body writhes from within. After a while you go numb.

It takes a catastrophic pain to cause real panic or symptom that's how you really know you're a warrior. One of the hardest struggles I've faced in my own journey is knowing what symptoms to take seriously and what symptoms are part of my daily life. When symptoms can range from something as small as a headache to as large as an internal vibration when are we supposed to worry?

Everytime you go to the Emergency room or the doctors office they ask you to rate your pain on a scale between 1 and 10. I've learned to to confidently say the word 4. I live at a 4. There is never a day when my pain is below a 4. It might make its way higher up the scale but it never drops below. Many times I think I go to the ER just for reassurance. Reassurance that my symptoms are real, that I'm not crazy, and that I'm not dying.

It's unfortunate really; the amount of pain and struggle you've had to endure to get to where you are today. Living with chronic illness is something so hard to explain. Many have developed empathy and understanding, but unless you've lived it yourself you can't begin to imagine what goes into getting out of bed in the morning. I've always wondered if people walk through life without ever stepping foot in a doctors office or a hospital, its something I can't even imagine. The funny thing about pain is that you wouldn't pay someone to go through what you have, but you also wouldn't trade it for the world.