Monday, August 20, 2007

The Price of Pain

This post was sent to me by the founder of the Canadian Neuropathy Association. It is a powerful summary of the enormous costs each one of us who struggles with the nightmare of chronic pain has to pay, and the commitment to hang in there and fight we must make at the beginning of each new day. The original author is unknown, but I would love to know who wrote this.

The Price of Pain

The cost of prescriptions, medical treatments and devices, surgeries, worker's comp insurance, disability payments, physical therapy, psychological therapy and such...Yes, you can add all those things up and get a total cost...but that is not the price of pain. The price of pain is more...

The price of pain is the loss of self-respect when you can no longer complete personal grooming, cook meals or take care of your family the way you want to...

The price of pain is the loss of rewarding employment when you cannot perform the tasks to do the job you love...

The price of pain is the loss of quality of life when you can't go hiking with your children or dancing with your spouse...

The price of pain is the loss of relationships with friends and family when the pain and medication makes it impossible to even have a conversation or attend important events...

The price of pain is no longer being independent when you cannot drive or shop for groceries alone...

The price of pain is the depression and mental anguish the pain brings with it...

The price of pain is the loss of sleep and the resulting problems sleep deprivation causes...

The price of pain is the side effects of the medications taken in an attempt to survive the day...

The price of pain is when you lose who you are in the pain. These things and more are the price of pain. It is the living every minute of every day around what your pain level is or when you can take the next dose of medication, praying it will bring more pain relief than the last dose. When happiness is 3-4 hours of pain-free sleep or a day with only 75% of the usual pain...

The price of pain is paid by the person in pain as well as those who love them...

The price of pain is watching someone you love suffer day after day, night after night and you are helpless to ease their pain...

The price of pain is when your child asks "Can you play with me, if you are feeling Ok?"

The price of pain is beyond money, the price of pain is beyond words, the price of pain is all encompassing. The price of pain seems endless...

The price of pain is there until the day that person is free of their damaged body...

The price of pain is all these things and more. But the pain is not me and I am not the pain...

The pain is part of my life, but the pain will not be my life. I will fight, fight, and fight. And though the pain fills my life it will not take my life. Each day I live, I fight and show the pain who I am. Even though the pain may take much of my life it will not consume me. I will not allow the price to be that high...

The price of pain is all this, but I am more...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this is the truth of it-----economically, socially, mentally, physically------we've been ruined, abused, maligned, disbelieved, abandoned, and left for dead-----site after site, case after case, heart after heart all sing the same haunting song, yet here we all are, shambling by the millions, looking for health, mercy,validation, peace, and at worst, putting ourselves thru medical butchery in the name of please god, a second chance..............write to this one, that one, be your own advocate, educate, energise, seek--all of these are great bywords, but the bottom line is bleak--------where can we possibly go from here?