Empathy

 Empathy.......

People who live with debilitating pain are my new heroes. In a display of psychic prowess, I correctly predicted in my last blog post that I'd be making a trip to the eye doctor fairly soon. That was last Sunday afternoon. I'd woken up that morning with a dull ache behind my eye which had preceded each of my last visits to the eye doctor. Typically it would start with redness and lead into the ache/light sensitivity by the next day. But this time there was no redness, just the ache, so I resigned myself to some mild discomfort for the rest of the day, knowing I would just be calling the doctor's office in the morning (just how I wanted to spend a day off huh?) Oh if I had only known.....

By 9pm the dull ache had begun to intensify so I decided to just go to bed and try to sleep through it. About midnight I woke to find my eye was just about swollen shut and the dull pain had increased to an overwhelming throb. The pressure was unlike anything I had experienced before - like quite possibly my eye was going to explode. After about an hour of trying to breathe through it, I finally woke hubby up. I was getting scared of how intense the pressure was. That and the fact that the moonlight coming in the window was causing excruciating pain, (I also had my sunglasses on....I kid you not), was beginning to concern me. We decided to call the after hours emergency number for my eye doctor. The doctor on call was extremely kind and offered to meet me at the office to administer some kind of pain meds, but warned that he would need me to come back as soon as the office opened to see the surgeon as it was clear this was no longer routine complications from the surgery back in January. I decided that I could forgo the pain meds as long as he could assure me I was doing no physical harm in waiting it out (he assured me I was not.) He promised he would be in touch after reaching the surgeon and arranging for him to meet us first thing. (Thank you Dr. Hurley for calling not once, but four more times and once to check on me after everything was said and done.)

I can do this...I thought. Just a couple of more hours and I'll have relief. I'll just lay down and close my eyes and I'll be able to fall asleep.... I'm so tired. Let me tell you, pain in the light of day with activity, sounds and whatnot going on around you is so different from silent, dark, dead of the night pain. There was nothing to distract me from the pain, nothing to make me think it would be over soon. The hours of night drag on endlessly when you have pain. I love night time and a good night's sleep ranks high on my list of must haves. Yet, I could see how quickly night could become your enemy when you have chronic pain. Hubby lay with me, rubbing my back, trying to ease the pain. He didn't speak, clearly knowing there was nothing he could say to make it go away. I just had to (literally) grit my teeth and bear it.

When the phone call came at 6:30am telling me what office to meet the surgeon at, I had reached the breaking point. I was shaking, drifting between chills and sweating; literally wanting to jump out of my skin. I have no shame in admitting that I finally just broke down crying out of sheer frustration. To have no relief from the pain was too much to take and in reality it hadn't even been 24 hours.....some people experience this for days, months on end? As I said.....my new heroes.

The rest of that day is really a blur. We had to drive to their alternate office (I have no idea how we got there or what the office looked like on the outside.) A series of exams followed by a meeting with the surgeon, who very quickly advised that we reverse the surgery from last January. My body, for whatever reason, was rejecting the implants. Each of the previous issues had been small warning signs. Since we weren't listening, it was going to turn things up. A heavy dose of oral steroids, antibiotic and steroid eye drops, a Valium and about 12 hours later, the surgery was reversed and the pain was gone. Hopefully I am now on the road to recovery. A few more weeks of steroids will tell the tale......

Physical pain can be an annoyance - daily debilitating pain is something else all together. It's mentally, physically and emotionally draining. To deal with that and try to lead a daily life, takes a particular kind of strength - a strength I'm not honestly sure I'd be able to exhibit. If you have someone in your life who deals with daily pain, have patience when they are struggling, offer support where you can and say a prayer that it be taken from them. 

~ Adrienne