Lion and Lambs

In the recent past, as I have been feeling more and more like I am going crazy, I believe God has been trying to comfort me by showing me that I am not alone. He has given me the repeated message that the things I feel are very universal amongst chronic pain sufferers. It is always so encouraging and uplifting to know that I am not so strange, that maybe I am not sinking like I thought I was. I love how He cares for us In our suffering. I love that I am important enough to Him that He will lead me to the things I need to see to be able to continue on.

Today’s blog post by Paula Kamen once again shares the experience of a pain patient who has been to the edge. Paula explains how Hazel has to “disconnect” in order to function in the world. I was talking to my new counselor about that only yesterday, asking her if it was normal or even healthy. Paula writes:

Hazel Reese didn’t realize she was suicidal until the day she was filling out the intake form at her first appointment at Chicago’s Diamond Headache Clinic in 1982. That was when she read the question asking if she had ever tried to take her own life.

She then remembered that just recently, “I purposely had walked in front of a bus one day down at Washington and Wells. … But I never had the thought consciously of doing something to myself, like cut my wrists or something like that. I never had those kinds of thoughts,” recalled the 63-year old, in an interview over herbal tea and her homemade bran muffins at her North Side home, while a blizzard raged outside.

This mental disconnection makes sense because, like so many people with chronic pain who have to keep a full-time job, it was Hazel’s main way of coping. For her 24 years at the phone company, she put all of her energy every day into just getting through work “like a robot” — a comparison she makes often -– while keeping the pain a secret from most others. When she got home, she could do nothing but collapse.

I am thankful to Paula again for sharing this look into life with challenges.

Renamed Tootsie Pop, which I think is cuter, because apparently she pops around a lot

I can’t wait to see her chocolate fur in person and get doggie nuzzles.

I had another . I found a new and fascinating cause as to why I keep having migraines and why the Botox is not working as well as in the past, but that is another story. So after being humiliated in the bank by my unique form of migraine, I sit in my car for thirty minutes waiting for my medication to take affect so I can drive home, bypassing the hospital!

I finally get to my recliner and I am thinking just make it stop!!! I am so that it is happening again.

So I and . What can I do. Then, .

I decide to take a military approach, an all out war.

Hit it with all I’ve got. One of everything in my migraine rescue kit. Not that I would recommend this as a smart approach, I was at a desperate place. I am however, to say it worked!!

As you might guess from the website name and the picture, I have a soft spot for lions and lambs. It started with my collecting lambs. I can’t even remember my first lion, but I think someone just gave me one out of the blue. The rest is history. This morning I was at AJ’s Fine Foods. I love going there this time of year because all the Easter stuff the sell means new lambs. The problem is choosing one.

I have been looking for a few days, and then this morning, a new dispaly. Here she is, the latest in the collection, so cute and so soft.

I am not known for having a green thumb. I have always said that I could kill silk plants. Little did I know that compared to my friends, I am an expert. For fun, my friend L, bought these plants to see what we coud do with them…basically, who would kill them first. Much to my astonishment, here is my plant:

This is a few weeks after they were purchased. When I emailed this picture to my other two friends who are participating, L proceeded to turn over her dying plants to me. Mind you, this is a week after I put them in plant therapy.

When L went on and on to D about how my plant looked, she too turned over her plant to me. Not as desperate as L’s plants, this poor thing was still headed for a quick death.

Soon they will be ready to transplant into a garden. I think this forsaken place could use their flowers to brighten it up. Whatdaya think?

When I came out of my house the other morning when I was not feeling well, and not happy about being out, I turned my head toward my front yard and this is what I was greeted with…

I got an instant smile on my face. Simple things. Simple beauty. These shamrocks have been in my yard for awhile, but they have never had flowers on them before and it was just what I needed that morning.

I hope they last until St Patrick’s Day!

By last night I was feeling so bad that I was sure it was the flu and called several friends I had been around to warn them. Fortunately however, I woke up feeling much better this morning. That means it had to be a migraine…or a miracle healing. The good and the bad about preventive medications working is that they can change or eliminate the aura and the course of the migraine as a whole, making it not as recognizable. Less painful yes, but also harder to identify, thus harder to know how to treat symptoms.

So, on that note, my migraine search for this morning yielded a blog post by Paula Kamen, entitled Leaving the Rabbit Hole. She writes for, among other publications, New York Times new migraine blog. She also wrote All in my Head,An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache Her blog post peaked my interest because it speaks of how I, and I am sure many people with chronic pain, feel…in frustration, but are afraid to say out loud.

The worst thing, to me, about having a non-stop multi-year headache isn’t necessarily the pain. Or the way it tends to disrupt intimate relationships, empty all financial reserves, and sabotage the best-laid career plans. It’s not even the endless barrage of (albeit well-meaning) suggestions for “cures” from everyone you meet, most of which you’ve already tried anyway (except for the colon cleansing and the Jews for Jesus conversion).

No, it’s the emotional suffering – from all the guilt and the shame, of patients like me thinking it’s our entire fault, and maybe all in our heads.

The article has much more to it and is well worth the time to read it. Leaving the Rabbit Hole

When you try just about everything anybody suggests, you try many medications and supplements, you go through painful procedures, and eventually find your way back where you started, the frustration does lead you to start questioning yourself. It just doesn’t make sense. Doctors can do heart transplants and brain surgeries, yet they can’t effectively eliminate migraines or chronic pain. So if it doesn’t make sense…?

I am thankful that someone prominent was willing to say it out loud, in such an out loud place. Perhaps her voice will help bring attention to this devastating problem, and help us let go of the shame that accompanies it in the process.

Haven’t been here for a few days, obviously. I have spent the last few days mostly sleeping. I even went to have my hair done and fell asleep in the shampoo bowl. My sweet hairdresser friend let me sleep for about twenty minutes.

Now I am trying to decide if it is flu, side effects of the Botox since this doctor used more than the others, allergies, migraine, or any combination of the above. Whatever it is…I WANT DRUGS!!!!!

…and my Tootsie Roll!

Announcing the soon arrival…

Eph 3:14-18

14 When I think of the wisdom and scope of His plan, I fall down on my knees and pray to the Father of all the great family of God-some of them already in heaven and some down here on earth- 16 that out of His glorious, unlimited resources He will give you the mighty inner strengthening of his Holy Spirit. 17 And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in Him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; 18 and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is SO GREAT that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.
TLB

Verse 18 makes me imagine God trying with passion to describe how great His love for us is, wanting us to understand how He feels for us, then He basically says, “There are no words, no way for Me to make you understand how great it is, because it cannot even be measured, it will NEVER end.” We cannot fathom the perfect love that God, our perfect Father, has for us.

Thank You, Kathy, for working so faithfully and so diligently to teach me about God’s love and human love. Your love and your endurance will never be forgotten.

Kathleen Ann (my older sister)
Dec 29, 1956 – February 14, 2000