Twenty-Two

First, I want to say thank you for the comment, Ms. MJ is not my thing, in fact one of the primary reasons I divorced X was because of his addiction and obsession with it. But, I appreciate your intention, and I do think it's a helpful tool for those who need it. I am not against it, I just didn't like what it was doing to my marriage with X, it caused a great deal of trouble for us. I am actually a complete square, I don't smoke- anything- and I don't touch alcohol, not beer not wine, never have- I didn't even drink my champagne at my wedding reception, A drank it for me! But I will take Vicodin like it's free on the street corner, so go figure. I am doing better, which I guess is why I haven't been on here lately. I have finally found someone who may have the cure I've been looking everywhere for. After all these years of expensive medical tests and procedures and hospitals and pain clinics, of great amounts of every type of pain pill out there, of doctor after doctor being stumped and not being able to help me...it has come down to a simple massage therapist. Yes, that is right, as un-fucking-believable as that sounds. Someone suggested I go see her, and now she is my saving grace, the person who can put me back on the road to recovery and sanity, and hopefully, normalcy. She specializes in trigger point therapy, and for the first time, someone has actually put their hands RIGHT where the pain is, and is addressing it. All the other doctors who thought it was my back, treated me for back problems, but never stopped to listen to me tell them it was not "my back", it was my groin and thigh. I couldn't sit down, it was extreme torture to drive, because my groin felt like it was on fire, my leg felt like it was being ripped away from my body. Even at night when I would try to relax to sleep, the pain and the burning tightness in my leg would not allow me to get comfortable, and I would get very little sleep unless I resorted to about 2-3 sleeping pills every night. I would wake up the next day, haggard, exhausted, still in pain, very angry about it, and very much in an ill mood that would last throughout the day. Each day, each night, the cycle would repeat itself, I would wake up and wonder why bother and I would go to bed praying that I wouldn't wake up the next day, but I would, and I hated life for it, and it has been three very very long years of this. Still, each and every doctor and specialist that I would see decided that it just must be something in my back, I had a pinched nerve perhaps although no one could see it on the Xray or MRI, they couldn't tell me that for sure, they were all just guessing. They would all try something different, a different pill, or more pills, another epidural in a different place in my spine. Nothing, nothing, nothing ever gave me relief. Another Xray, another MRI, another doctor. The massage therapist talked to me, listened to me, had me point out on a diagram of the human anatomy to show her exactly where I hurt and how I hurt. She took my history, and finally we came to a conclusion that my pain was due to contracted muscles in an area where I had a medical problem several years ago, a common female problem that left me doubled over in pain for many months. The medical problem and the groin pain started at the same time, but when the medical problem was cleared up, the staggering pain remained in my groin and upper leg. She told me that when people suffer an injury or have a trauma to their body, it's very common that the muscles and tendons in that area contract with the pain, and that in some instances even once the pain is gone, the muscles just never ever let go and relax back to their normal place. It can last for years. My pain has been haunting me every day for over 3 1/2 years now, the entire time I've been married to A. So the therapist started to work on the muscles in my groin area, using the trigger point technique, which in itself is actually quite painful and bruised me for several days afterwards. But once the bruising was gone, my old pain was gone with it and as of today, I do not have pain in the part of my leg where she worked. But that was only a small area, and I do still have the pain where she has not yet worked on me. I go back to see her again this week, and she will concentrate on another area of my leg. She said that's why nothing ever showed up on the ultrasounds or CT scans, or MRIs and Xrays. That's why the many many epidurals I had in my back gave me no relief. That's why the mountain of pain pills I took every day never helped. Tightened muscles would not show up on any test, and no pain medicine would help it. The only thing that helped was the pill I took at bedtime, which was a very very strong muscle relaxer, and completely knocked me out. Sadly, I would wake up the next morning in agonizing pain again and the day would start all over again. I will continue to see her, and my hopes are that within the next few weeks, I will be completely pain free for the first time in well over three years. I have had crippling pain every single day, and I've forgotten what it feels like to be normal, to move about freely, to sleep soundly, to desire sex with my beautiful husband, to walk down the sidewalk, to drive to the grocery store, to be healthy even. The extreme amount of weight I gained with the inactivity, the wallowing I've done in self-pity that eats away at my soul every day, the awful names I've called myself because I can't get my housework done or I don't feel like having sex- I will have to work on those myself, and it will take time, I know. But I hope that it all will end very soon. And I hope with the freedom from pain, I can start to feel better inside my head as well, to clean out the dark and heavy thoughts, to replace them with the love I have for my husband, and hopefully, for my life again. Hating myself, hating my life has claimed a part of me that I want to get back again. I spent SO many years unhappy when I was married to X, because he was a dirtbag and a prick and he treated me like shit. But A, when I started dating him, it was the happiest time of my life because he is such a prince among men, so open and loving and wonderful and, he loved me back, he is still crazy about me even through all of this misery, he still desires me even with the extra weight, and he still tells me he loves me every single day. Our marriage has been so difficult, because of how much I've changed, inside and out, with the chronic pain. He says he understands, but he can't, this is a man in his 40's who has never missed one single day of work in his entire life due to illness. So, he can't say that he "understands" my pain. He may say that to make me feel better about it, and I know he means well, but he doesn't understand. It's not possible unless you go through it, and I certainly do not want him to ever go through something like this. I have always struggled in my life- with my weight, with my violent tendencies, with my dark perceptions. But the pain only compounded it over the years. I wanted to be free of it, but I was too much of a chicken shit to take my own life. Sometimes I would be driving and wish for a fatal car accident- I would be gone but A couldn't blame himself for it. But I was too chicken for that too. I decided instead that I have fight- to fight for my life, to fight against my body and my mind to rid it from the poison, to fight simply to survive my life day to day. I do want to live, and I do want to be happy, and I do want a normal life! If my physical pain is gone, surely my mental and emotional agony will leave me as well. I have to believe that. I have to keep holding out hope. I have to stop looking at my beautiful home as a prison, I have to stop looking at my life as a black hole that is sucking me farther down into it. I know that the pain caused my mental instability and depression, but I also know the depression deepened my physical pain. I have to believe that with one gone, the other will follow, surely. When I was in my 20's all I ever wanted to do was be a novelist, I didn't care what kind of book I wrote, I didn't want any literary awards, I just wanted to write full time and be paid for it. I've been writing again lately, and it feels good, and it is freeing for me. I lose myself in this little world I have created, and I can forget about the world that I actually have to live in. Once my pain is gone, and I can sit at my desk for longer periods without it causing such stabbing discomfort in my leg, I know that I will move forward with my dream of writing. I don't think A believes me, but it doesn't matter, and even if I suck as a writer at least it gives me something to do during the day and something to think about and something to look forward to. A is not at all a creative person, he is very technical and smart and likes results and hard work. I love to read, to write, to paint, to take photos, I am very artsy. But the worse I started to feel, the less interest I had in those subjects. I found no joy in a beautiful colorful piece of art, I felt no delight in a perfectly photographed landscape. I would read but the words went right through me, instead of finding their way into my heart. I want that life back, and for the first time in a very very very long time, I actually believe it is possible. All thanks to a massage therapist in a tiny little office in an out of the way shopping center. Who knew?