Pain, pain, go away

Know how sometimes you have a little niggle -  a twinge of pain somewhere that you think will go away in a bit, so you don't do anything about it, or you forget about, or you simply don't have time to do something about? Yeah, I had one of those. This, dear friends, is a cautionary tale about getting older.

So everyone knows that I am I serious need of a body upgrade. In case you missed it, let me give you the low down. I have:

~ a skew sacrum (fractured falling off a horse in full gallop; it was never picked up until after it had healed) which gives me incredible back-pain and periodic sciatica

~ damaged cervical vertebrae (same horse, same fall)

~ hyper-mobility syndrome (all my joints bend more than they should) giving rise to multiple twisted ankles and sore knees

~ torn ligaments in one ankle (that hyper-mobility thing in overdrive) with chipped bone fragments that had to be surgically removed and so now I have reduced mobility in that ankle (& can't wear high heels for more than a day in a stretch)

~ fractured knee-caps in both knees

~ RSI in both wrists (that's thanks to practicing octave scales for my Gd 8 piano exam...)

~ APS (blood clotting disorder which results in my blood not pumping very well, so my heart works overtime all the time, yet, oddly, my blood pressure is naturally low)

~ poor circulation (thanks to my APS issues) causing me to suffer terribly in cold weather, when my hands are white, my lips are blue and I can't stop shivering

~ one side of my body shorter than the other (so my clothes always fall off my right shoulder...): running with one slightly shorter leg is a lot of fun, not.

~ virus, mould spores and hayfever-induced asthma

~ I get migraines every month (both period related and APS related)

... Have I forgotten anything?

I pretty much live with some sort of daily pain. I can't remember the last time I had a totally pain-free day. Some days the pain is mild - just an ache. Some days I don't want to move out of bed cause it all just hurts too much.

Of course, I am my own worst enemy, because if I was dedicated in doing my exercises, my back wouldn't get so bad. But, you know how it is. Life gets in the way of taking proper care of yourself.

Earlier this year, like back in the first term, my shoulders and neck got all messed up, again. I was getting headaches, and eventually things were so bad I was struggling to turn my head to see my blind spot. After 3 months I figured it wasn't getting better, so I went for a deep tissue massage, and came out with a shoulder injury... And still not able to see my blind spot. 

I thought it was 'just' a ligament injury, and would heal in a few months. Hah! Turns out it was a whole lot more. Turns out that my pain is chronic, and that my spinal column is a mess. Yes, I though I knew that already, but it's actually much worse than I thought it was. Because of not doing anything about my pain for such a long time, I have made things 100x worse. Now I have two serious spinal issues that need to be corrected if I want to have any quality of life when I am 60. (And 60 is suddenly looking a lot closer to me now than 40 did when I was 20!)

And, of course, that 'whole lot more' is costing me a pretty packet to get my Physio to fix.

That's the problem with chronic pain and injury. The longer you leave it, the worse it is to fix. My brain is still so messed up over all this, that when you press on my shoulder, I feel the pain in my butt, or in my toes, or in my fingers. As I said, chronic pain -  it messes with everything. (Fortunately, my body is responding well, and quickly, to treatment!)

But the worst of all is that if I had sorted myself out properly when I was younger, none of this would be necessary now. Of course, when I was younger, I didn't think it was that serious. I didn't think it was that necessary. Getting on with enjoying my life was a lot more fun! When I was younger I was foolish, oh so foolish! (plus, I didn't really have the money to fix myself...)

So, young people, take a lesson from me. When you get injured, take the time to get professional help and get yourself properly healed. Don't just press on, or do things half-cocked. It will come back to haunt you when you get older, and it will cost you a great deal more!

And I give everyone permission, when you see me, to ask how good I am being about my treatment -  my exercises, my stretches, my posture! I don't ever want to get back to where I was a few weeks ago. I want to live a life in which living pain-free (most of the time) and having pain-free movement is normal.

Days of yore

Yesterday I relived a favourite childhood activity. I dug in the beach for white mussels. For years, I've been unable to find them, but today we found 4 little ones. I'm hopeful that this signals a return in biodiversity to the beaches.

(I see that chameleons are returning to the city's gardens after years of absence, and flamingos have returned to the Black River. All round it seems that biodiversity is on the increase again. Yay!)

It makes me hanker for my childhood and things like sailing at Hout Bay or Fish Hoek every weekend.

Yet, those times are tinged in grief for me, because the best times of my childhood were also the worst, as my parents were fighting and eventually divorced.

The effects of a divorce are long lasting, particularly for the children involved. I genuinely don't think anyone understand unless they've been through it themselves. This morning, 27 years after my folks split up, the grief was raw again. It will never be over for me. The grief of having my parents stop loving each other, of having to share them with their new partners, and those partners' children, will always be there. 

This chasm, this heart break, can be papered over most of the time, but that's all it ever is - a pretense that I don't mind, that I am okay with it. 27 years later, and I'm still not okay with it. 27 years later, as a grown woman with children of my own, I still hate it.

But with the realisation that my family life will never be what I long for, I found myself realising that my family now is my husband and my kids. My extended family is my church community and friends, and Graeme's family. I'd love to say I no longer care about what my step-parents do or don't think/ feel/ say, but I do care. Deeply. 

I care because their decisions affect my parents, and that affects me. Their decisions put my parents in some very awkward situations, which I don't think is fair on them. I can see their pain at having to choose, sometimes, between me & my kids, and their partner.

But then, as I told my own daughter this evening: Life is not fair. The sooner she accepts that, the easier her life will be.

Family and relationships are so complex. Things are never as cut and dried as we'd like them to be. So now I am faced with a decision to make, in which I must weigh up a multitude of effects, and try to determine which set of effects will be the least damaging to my own heart, to my kids' hearts, to my parents' hearts, and find the decision and action that will create it. 

And of course, try not to let my emotions get the better of me while I'm trying to make that decision.

Things really were so much simpler when I was little! Right was right, and wrong was wrong, and things were always black and white, not shades of grey. But would I really want to go back to that time? I don't know. I didn't have an easy childhood, but before my folks got divorced, at least I didn't have that complication to deal with. At least that portion of my life was simpler to deal with.

And right now, I long for that simplicity again.

For sale: one used shoulder

About two weeks ago I did something to my shoulder. I know exactly what I did... I worked too hard at marking. My body's way of sending me a message is to cramp up. After 2 weeks, I'm finally fed up enough to go and see someone.

I've done the heat, rest and compression thing. I've stretched, exercised and Voltaren-ed. I've Neurofen-ed and warm-bathed, and massaged.

Clearly, none of that worked. So, I admit defeat. I surrender. I will call a physio on Mon.

Sigh.