Learning how to suffer well looks like the theme of my life lately. 

Have you ever been through something hard that you knew could not be walked around? Life is a muddy puddle for me right now, but there’s no way around it. It must be walked through.

Do you know what I mean? We all have our things that we go through.

My chosen theme for 2016 was to fix my SI/hip/back/leg pain.

That’s the goal. Instead, 2016 has been the most painful year I’ve had in a long time. I’ve pulled out of this before though, so that encourages me that perhaps I can overcome it again.

At least none of my ribs have popped out of joint this time, ha!

My body is becoming a huge obstacle to me. It is stiff and painful and worst of all, it is incapable, and I hate that. Don’t you hate it when people call you “weak’?

Who wants to be weak? Not me.

I want to shout, “No! I’m not weak. I’m raising four little boys. I’ve sent a husband away to war for a year straight each time. I am not weak! I’m TOUGH!”

But my body disagrees. My body is sad. I’ve taken to going to the gym this week to walk in the evenings.

Thoughts in my head at the gym:

“Geesh, why is my heart rate so high? Oh, I should be taking my medicine right now. Ugh.  I’ll be okay for just a 20 minute walk. I’ll take my medicine when I get home. Why am I like 90 years old??

Oh my goodness! The girl next to me is running on speed 7.2, and her heart rate is only 120!!

What’s mine? Oh, 180. Let me slow it down to 3.1 for speed. 180 just sounds bad. I wonder if it is. I wish I had gone to medical school. I wonder if I look like a pathetic, frail old lady to her (girl running).”

I’ve had sacroiliitis pain for years, but now there are all these new pains to go along with it. Plus, I want to hurry up and get it all seen about, but insurance is taking forever.

I’m kind of nervous when I get out of bed in the morning. I have thoughts like this:

“Will it be a fever day? (Yes, yes it was.) What is it about fevers that knock you down and render you useless?

Where will the pain will be today?

I have got to act at least normal enough that the kids don’t get behind in school.

I’m afraid that no one will ever be able to fix this. I said I wanted to put Humpty back together again, but the thing is that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty back together again.”

I want to have more empowering thoughts.

I want to learn how to be the kind of sufferer that doesn’t tell others about the pain, but if they don’t know, how will they ever be able to give me the grace that I need?

So there must be some sort of balance. Lay down the pride enough to ask for help. I had to do that today, at the park, when I couldn’t get my body to cooperate with pulling JD out of his baby swing.

But I do not want to become so consumed with my own pain that I can’t do anyone else any good. That scares me.

And you know where we should go when we’re scared? On our knees, on our knees in prayer for help. The Lord is still in heaven, and He knows exactly what we’re going through.

Here are a few verses that have given me comfort on my quest to suffer well:

“I have become like a man who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply, I wait for you, O Lord; you will answer, O Lord my God. For I said, “Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.” For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.”    Psalm 38:14-17

“If I should say, “My foot has slipped,” Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up. When my anxious thoughts multiply within me your consolations delight my soul.”  Psalm 94:18-19

But you know what the thing is? If you want to hear God’s consolations delighting your soul, you have to be quiet and listen to Him.

If you never listen for His voice, no, you probably won’t ever hear it.

So I’m making time to listen. I am getting low, real super low, down close to the ground. I’m carrying my troubles to Jesus because while doctors have failed me before, the Lord never has.

I encourage you all to try it too. Get low and get quiet. No electronics. No t.v. Just you on the floor, hiding from your children if necessary. You, on the floor, listening for the voice of the one who made you.

“Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.”  Micah 7:8

Editorial update:

I wrote this during a hard time. Things did eventually get so much better. I sit here seven years after writing this, not dealing with chronic pain at all anymore. How? Well, while the doctors I turned to mostly could not help me or find anything wrong with me, I found one who did.

I saw a cardiologist who told me to try life without gluten. This would never have occurred to me. I wrote about that here.  It was life changing. That will NOT work for everybody, but if you happen to have no idea that you have celiac, it will help you.

So my advice is to specifically ask for a blood test for celiac if you deal with random pain problems like I did with no clear explanation. Once you go gluten free, they cannot detect it, so get the blood test first if you can.

If you do not have access to good health care, as is surprisingly common, just try going gluten free and see if you feel better. You might be amazed.

My prayer for you is that these clouds will pass for you soon, and you will no longer have to worry about how to suffer well at all. 

For more on this topic, see these posts:

You can have the gluten, but you’ll never get the chocolate

Trusting God When Your Problems Just Won’t Go Away

The post Learning to Suffer Well, or at Least Find the Balance appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Vacation in Boston, Summer 2012, Pain level was way down. Such a fun time!

To read Part I Click here. Again, this is a chronic pain post: feel free to skip this one if it’s not your cup of tea. I promise to not always blog about hip pain y’all…

Now onto Part II of the saga.

So where did we leave off? Oh, yes. I was lying on my bed, probably on a hot pad, staring at the ceiling, praying, and crying.

I prayed for help. It came. God has always been so faithful.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll just pretend I’m not home,” I thought.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Someone’s at the door!!!  Mom!! Get up! The doorbell!”

Groan. Obviously, we are at home.

“I’m coming. Okay.” I hobbled down the stairs, keeping my arm tucked in close. I answered the door. Just a nice lady needing to ask me a few questions. I don’t even remember her name.

I apologized for taking so long to answer the door. I explained that I’d been having trouble with my back. (It’s just much quicker than saying hip and shoulder.)

And do you know what she did?? She said she could relate! And then she pulled out her phone, and she said, “I have this chiropractor, his name is Dr. Bodnar. Let me give you his number.”

She assured me he was the best, and then she left. I never saw her before that day, and I never saw her afterwards.

I had only been to a chiropractor one other time, way back in 2005, when I was 8 months pregnant and also desperate for help with the hip.

I called the chiropractor. They got me in the very next day. Take that, physical therapy clinic! They were thorough. As my Granny, a fellow pain sufferer, once said, “They measured every bone in my body.” They also took x-rays.

One visit. One visit was all it took to fix the rib-cage thing. He just crunched my back, and bam! that rib went back to where it belonged. The truly fantabulous part is: It never came back!! Phew!

My neck was also repaired quickly. In only a few appointments, I could back up my car with a clear conscience. Wahoo!

Even the hip and shoulder tapered down to a manageable level. I was sold. I didn’t even bother to go back to the doctor who did the x-rays at my regular clinic. These chiropractor people were helping me, so I’d stick with them. No, my insurance didn’t pay for it, but I was breathing, walking, and sitting! Things were looking up!

They explained to me that my neck was straight rather than curved as it should be, and one side of my pelvis is higher than the other.

That’s when I also began to exercise. Dr. Bodnar gave me a few basic stretches and elbow planks to strengthen my core.

Y’all! When I began to do elbow planks in 2012, I couldn’t hold it for more than 3 seconds! It was so sad!! Now I can do 3 sets of 30 seconds a piece, in a row! I have come so far. At that time, the weak core explanation for my pain was something I could settle for. It was true back then. Not so, these days.

The exercise phase.

I lost 15 pounds. I ran. I swam. I was feeling great.

“Hey! Let’s have another baby!” You know I love babies.

But the truth had sunk in by this point that my hip and shoulder were chronic. This is a pain I will be “managing” for the rest of my life. Sometimes, even with the chiropractic care, my hip would flare up for a few days and then calm back down. The shoulder is more of a steady pinch, but I mostly only notice it when I’m lying down or sitting.

I call it sciatica, a hip problem, or a rear end problem. I know it’s confusing. The thing is that when it’s flared up, it hurts to drive, sit, lay down, or climb stairs. When I touch my foot to the pedals of a car, it hurts in my rear end and lower back, just to the right of my spine and deep into my rear.

But then there’s another aspect beside the sacroiliac pain.  The hip joint itself is also angry, so if the flare up gets bad enough, I have trouble walking. Maybe it’s all part of the same thing, but that’s why I keep saying I don’t know what I have, I just know it hurts.

So I was careful about the fourth pregnancy. I faithfully visited Dr. Bodnar every other week. It was my healthiest pregnancy of all four. The pain still came and went, but no horror stories. It was super mild. The worst problem I had was pregnancy anemia and women in grocery stores asking me if I was sure I wasn’t having twins!

Rudest thing ever people. Just tell pregnant women, “You look great.”

That pregnancy agreed with me.

During that pregnancy, I also finally made it to a dermatologist for several things. I’m supposed to go every year, but I don’t. That was when I learned that I had psoriasis. Phew! What a relief! I was afraid that crazy nail was fungus or something, and oh the public disgrace! But no, just psoriasis. No biggie. I’d had the scalp and nose rash for as long as I could remember, but I’d never bothered to find out what it was. It’s not big or very noticeable, so I don’t worry about it.

From 2012 to Fall 2014, the shoulder and hip would wax and wane in intensity, but it mostly stayed mild and manageable. We moved across country, and I made it–all of that car riding!–with no problem. Those were two happy, fit years, even with the c-section thrown in. I was quick to recover. I worked hard to get my ab muscles back in tact, thanks to my Lindsey Brin fitness DVDs and my yoga instructor, Monica.

But then came the 2014 move. I was good the first few months, but as I began to home school the boys, I could not find time to exercise. Plus, I was so tense and stressed. My old pain came back knocking hard.

Such a beautiful place to move to! Who wouldn’t want to live near the coast of California?

I found a local chiropractor. That helped. Then I went on Christmas vacation. I had a truly happy outlook. For some reason, that seems to make a difference. I had a fun time in Alabama, and when we came back I had my very first 4 completely pain-free months since 2011! I was ecstatic. I’d thought that ache was just part of me. But it disappeared for four whole months!! Wahooooooo!

While the shoulder ache and the hip pain evaporated, a new pain showed up around Fall 2014. Remember the white pinky nail I mentioned in Part I? Well, eventually every single fingernail, save one or two, went white and yellow and pink on me. Toward the tip, it gets super thick and looks like it’s separating from the nail bed. It’s embarrassing.

my fingernail psoriasis: a surprisingly obnoxious condition. This is also called onycholysis.

Also, it hurts. That was when I learned to wash my hair with only whatever one or two fingers was working properly. It wasn’t like the arthritis fingers, where they have swelling in their knuckles. It was just the tips of my fingers that hurt. I still have it in my thumb.

I learned to not even attempt buttons or jars. At least I could walk. Four whole months of no shoulder or hip pain! 2015 was off to a smashing start! I was happy. Home school was going better. I was finally making friends, and suddenly I had offers to make money blogging.

Life was looking up for April. I even began to tell myself that perhaps the shoulder and hip thing was truly over. I even took on a sponsored post with a personal trainer who put me on this Water Challenge that totally fixed most of my nails:

If you look closely, you can still see it in my index finger, but look at my happy, healthy thumb nail! All from drinking tons of water. Thank you, Coach Cox!

We’ll talk about Part III next time: The pain came back, and I finally met a health care professional who questioned my spine theory.

Read Part I here.

Read Part III here.

The post My Battle With Chronic Pain Part II: Tendonitis, Sacroiliac Pain, Muscle Strain, Whatever appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.