Living with chronic pain

I'll start this blog post off by being completely honest with you. Since being diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at birth, I knew that life was not going to be easy. Then again, if we are being real, no one's life is easy. Not all of the time at least. However, when you have a disability, you have to literally think about everything before you do it. For instance, you always are left to wonder if a place of business has a ramp so that you can access it easily. That is really just the beginning of the difficulties. When you are a disabled person forced to go to a school where you are the only one in a wheelchair, the relentless battle with self-esteem begins. You begin to see the consequences of living differently within the school halls when you hear people who don't know any better chuckling at your disability. Not because the kids are 'mean', but rather because they are insecure and don;t know how to consider the feelings of others. The depression that would begin to surface as a result of the meaningless mumbling is not really something that can be described in words. It is only something that can be felt. For the purposes of this blog, though, I will attempt to explain it a bit better. I'm sure all of us remember being younger and scared to death that there was a monster under our bed. Even though we were reassured multiple times that nothing was going to grab us from underneath the bed, we still somehow felt the wrath of something choking us to death, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. This is exactly how this bout of long-term depression felt. No matter how many times I was told I was going to be OK, I felt the darkness fall over me and place a helmet of doom over my head that felt sealed forever. Of course, during this time, and as a teen, you think that life is out to get to you. You think that things cannot be any worse than they are at the current moment. However, as we go older, we realize just how naive that this thought process is. Typically, as an individual with CP, you are told by doctors for years on end that it is not a progressive disorder. So, as many people often do, I trusted the medical wisdom of my doctors thinking that everything concerning my disability would remain mostly the same. Years down the road, I would soon find out just how incorrect my doctors were. When I try telling people that I experience chronic pain, I realize that there is no real way for them to articulate just how much pain I am actually in. Through my own research, I have found that now it is quite common to have what medical professionals like to term post- impairment disorder. This is when your body starts to wear down as you age. Kind of like natural decline, but at a faster rate because of the effects of the disability. This causes chronic pain and fatigue. Although chronic, the pain and exhaustion levels vary depending on the day, but essentially, they never go away. Cerebral Palsy in itself is a tricky beast. Not every person who is affected experiences high levels of pain and some of the effects are determined by severity. My experience with high levels of pain and fatigue began roughly 2 years ago. The first thing that was starting to wear down was my thigh muscle on my right side. The pain from there then transferred to my hip on my right side. Based on x rays, it appears that I have a dislocated and deformed hip on my right side. (also known as hip dysplasia). The pain from my hip also affects my back and both sides of my back are causing pain constantly. I have been dealing with the pain by taking medication and keeping up with my dosages. So far, medicine is the only treatment that doctors have been willing to provide me with. They seem to think that surgery is too big of a risk considering my age and how much I still like to remain as active as possible despite all of my issues. Of course, dealing with all of these problems and potentially knowing that my body will never stop aching hurts my spirit. Especially so considering how active I was before any of this started surfacing. I cannot kick my legs anymore due to the severity of my pain, so it is hard for me to do any of the swimming I used to be able to do. As you can imagine, this plays a big role in my occasional sadness. For the most part, though, the good news is that the PAIN MAY BE WEARING DOWN MY BODY, but it is not taking away from my high spirited and compassionate nature. I'm still the same friendly and outgoing person. I'm just carrying quite the load on my shoulders. Sometimes, I think that I am tired of being strong, but my strength would never abandon me. It encourages me to keep going and to never ever give up. It is indeed my best asset. In a world of suffering and pain, you have to rely on your spirit to always show you the sunshine through the opaque clouds. Time and time again, even when it is hauntingly dark, I ALWAYS get shown the sunshine eventually, and for that, I am forever grateful!!