When It Rains It Pours and When It Pains It Roars

Some people say that pain is 'weakness leaving the body'.  Others say 'no pain no gain'.  Some love it and some hate it.  Right now pain seems more like a message to me, and my body, who started with whispers, has recently resorted to roaring!  Is pain your body's way of trying to tell you something?

Tuesday the 17th

7:30am: I wake up in extreme pain.  I can't turn my head from side to side and my back feels like I was dropped off the edge of a building.  I get ready for work, leave the bike, take the bus and pop about 400mgs of ibuprofen.

By 2pm, when my co-worker arrives, (about 1200mgs  of ibuprofen later) I realize this isn't just a little soreness and it's not going away.  Another co-worker books me an appointment with the chiropractor around the corner and I'm off.

2:30pm:  I'm on a table being popped and poked.  A "SEMG scan" is taken of my back.  Apparently there is vertebral subluxation and high levels of muscle tension and improper electrical impulses are being sent which can lead to "poor health" and different areas of the nervous system are being adversely affected.  OK, I'm jacked up, years of waitressing, old injuries, sports, etc, bla bla bla...

Wednesday the 18th

Bedridden and absolutely stir crazy.  I hate slowing down, changing gears in the middle of the week, it's the worst!  But not being able to move kind of forces you to slow down.  So I'm stuck in bed.  Ugh.

Thursday the 19th

Still stuck, but starting to relax.  I start to think to myself, this is a good thing, this is a chance for a little reflection, my body is trying to tell me to slow down, take it easy, heal yourself, yeah!  I'll heal myself.  OK, I can do this.

Friday the 20th

Back to work, but with a headset instead of the regular phone.  That's better!  I'm on this Holistic healing plan, no painkillers, no drugs of any kind, stay away from coffee, OK, no coffee, I can do this, this is easy.  No alcohol.  Alright, a mellow weekend.  Chiropractic visits 3 times a week for the next 8 weeks.  OK.  Here I go.

7:30pm:  I make it to meditation.  The topic of the discussion following is chronic pain and meditating with pain.  Cool, it must be a sign.  And wow, I'm feeling so much better.  So centered and, yeah!  I think I'm pretty much back to normal.  The pain is still there but I can deal with it.

Saturday the 21st

I work all day and pretty much rest all night.  Sunday is a day of and I decide I'm allowed to go out and have a little fun.  A little fun that maybe breaks a few of my "Holistic Healing Plan" rules.

Monday the 22nd

Wake up pretty sore.  A little fun is now feeling a little stupid.  Oh whatever, I'll be fine.  Who can be totally healthy for that long anyway!

3:00pm:  I tell my therapist how I've been reflecting and how I'm really starting to realize how I physicalize the different stresses in my life, I'm trying to be present... all that jazz.

Tuesday the 23rd

I wake up feeling a little under the weather.  A little sick and a little stressed, then the stress starts to build and build.  I can't miss any more work this pay period, I'm already spending so much on the chiropractor and I missed two days last week!  The voices in my head start an all out battle and I drag myself to work anyway trying to tune it out.

4:00pm  I leave work feeling tense and fatigued.  My neck is stiffening back up again and even the chiropractor notices the new swollen tissue.  She tells me to practice "release" and to "have faith" and everything will be fine. Faith in WHAT? OK, breathing, breathing...

Wednesday the 24th

Everything is not fine!  I wake up in a sweat, I'm sick!  No!  I can't be sick!  And it's not "go-to-work-and-just-block-it-out-sick".  It's "get-every-possible-symptom-known-to-man-sick" and oh, here, start your period too at the same time.  Complete with debilitating cramps, headache and the feeling that your guts are literally falling out of you.  The joy of being a woman.  I cry and call in to work.  Last week was one thing, but another day off!!!  I can't afford this let alone deal with the way I feel right now!  I'm pissed, and I'm pissed at me!  My own body!  How DARE you do this to me, ME!

Today:

Home again in bed.  Release.  There it is.  I don't have enough money this month.  I don't have insurance.  I don't have total health, I look like this and I don't have a choice.  I have to rest.  I have to try to heal and I have to let go.  Breathe in and breathe out.  And it's OK.  And I'll be OK.  What I'm starting to realize; what goes on in my mind comes out in my body.  When it rains it pours and when your body pains it roars, it wants to be heard and I'm going to try not to block out it's messages to me.  I surrender body.  Do your thing.

V is for... Victoria's Secret?

So February is all about:  L-O-V-E, love.  I've blogged about this a few times... It confuses me and I know I'm not alone in that! The truth is, I think I am indeed what a certain jerk once dubbed me: Lovelorn.

In a few days it will be the 14th and as much as we all despise the silliness that is the Hallmark Holiday, there's no reason to hate love, right? I want to love love! I admit it, and this year I'm going to try (just a teensy bit harder) to be less cynical about the whole thing. Plus, V-day gives me another excuse to to ponder my favorite, or least favorite 4-letter word. I'm still not sure. So while some friends are shopping for garter belts or planning weekends away, I'm blogging. Yeah.

I happen to be one of those horoscope reading girls but only the good ones and this week I was especially excited by the advice Mr. Brezsny gave me about my heart. Whether or not you care about astrology or oracles, this site is still full of interesting advice and ideas. Feeling hungry for a little more insight I decided to go ahead and read all the signs today! Maybe that's against the astrological rules or something but why stop with just mine when there are so many little nuggets of love-related advice for the week? I couldn't help myself!

Since I can't seem to define it, I'm always tickled by other peoples' ideas about love. Below are some of the things that caught my eye this week! From horoscopes other than my own, these are the quotes I liked:

"When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours," wrote author Robert Fulghum, "we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love."

For best results, cultivate the attitude described by the philosopher Voltaire in a letter to his partner Marie Louise Denis: "Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed."

Gertrude Stein defined love as "the skillful audacity required to share an inner life."

"The person one loves never really exists," said Arthur C. Clarke, "but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion."

"May the color blue behold your body while sun washes your shoulders near the window. May your lips refuse the kiss unless your heart is home. May euphoria find you in the place where you are lonely. May you light a billion candles with your mind." - artist and poet Wolff Bowden

"Greet one another with a holy kiss," says the Bible's first book of Corinthians

OK. So I'm thinking the first one is the best. I like that one. And I keep thinking of a quote from the movie "True Romance", if you've seen it you know how it relates. I may or may not be on the path towards love, but right now what sounds best to me is the prospect of finding someone to say this to:

"you're so cool"

Oh, and as much as I love avoidance, this is the advice I got from my own horoscope:

Capricorn, carry out the following assignments. First, practice loving something or someone you don't understand. Second, any time you start longing to be loved more than you are, make it a point to go out and love someone more than you have in the past. Third, visualize your heart growing softer and warmer and more receptive.

OK, alright, added to the list...