Try to get comfortable and you just can’t because every part of your body hurts. Painsomnia is what you call it. Fighting off the nausea and the pain, it eases up just enough for you to drift off to sleep. At 7am your one and only son, 13 years of age, quietly slips into bed with you, along with your 3 year old dog, a 50 pound rescue who is your companion and best friend. You are so grateful for their presence and yet still fully aware of how much pain your body is in.
Your back hurts so bad you don’t want to move. Your head is pounding. Your joints are throbbing. Your mouth is as dry as the desert. You know you should get up but your battered and broken body drifts back to sleep, waking only when your son whispers he has to go get ready for school. Although you know a beloved neighbor will get him to school, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to spend a few minutes with him before he heads off for his school day.
As you drag yourself from the bed, you realize that yesterday’s brief reprieve from the horrendous pain and torture that comes along with your many chronic illnesses and the daily chronic pain was just that; a glimpse into what life was like before your body was overcome by the vicious teeth of autoimmune diseases that have sunk deeply into your flesh and bones and ripped the life you knew away from you so quickly. Knowing it will be a tough day you choose to sit and enjoy your coffee before you head to the shower to get cleaned up and ready for a dentist appointment and brain MRI that are on the calendar for the day.
With the onslaught of disease labels comes many tests and Dr visits and never ending treatments and it’s just another day in the life of a person living with chronic illness and chronic pain. You debate rescheduling your 9am but know you’ve already done so once so you choose to power through and get it over with no matter the cost.
You sip your low acid, decaf coffee and watch the today show waiting for your meds to kick in. They show a very moving piece about the Anniversary of the Columbine shooting, the first mass school shooting in US history. Tears course down your face as you hear the stories of students, parents, teachers, and the principal of Columbine. What grace and wisdom they exemplify as they talk about how that tragic day changed their lives forever. You immediately are reminded of your teaching days and the tears flow harder, burning your inflamed cheeks as you reflect on your 6 years of teaching and how you loved being a teacher and would have taken a bullet for any one of your “kids”.
Sadness overcomes you as you hear the stories of the survivors and how they put their lives back together and chose to move forward in forgiveness rather than letting bitterness take root in their hearts. You’re amazed at the resiliency of the human spirit and touched to the core by these people and their ability to overcome.
Maybe those tears burn so badly because you remember who you were before the diagnoses that changed everything. But, you also let those tears flow because of your own gratitude to be alive, allowing yourself the opportunity to recognize your own resiliency, and that with your resiliency comes hope.
You hold on to hope that one day things will be better. You choose to believe that someday they might find a cure. You choose hope that beyond the pain, the meds, the infusions, the lab work, the treatments, and the suffering, you are still you.
Hope. A simple four letter word. A word that keeps you going. A word that gives you just enough strength to get through another day. Hope. You hold onto it tightly and embrace all the love in your life because truly, that is what matters and gives you the strength and fortitude to fight another day to live the best life you possibly can with the cards you’ve been dealt.
Never lose hope.
Made For More 