I haven’t got time for the pain

I haven’t got need for the pain, either.

I confirmed something very important, this past week – if I do not exercise vigorously, first thing in the morning before I do anything else, I pay for it in pain.

For those who know what it is like to battle chronic pain on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, over the course of months, even years, you know what I mean, when I say, I will do anything in my power to keep this pain from taking over my life.

For those who are lucky enough to not have that experience, you can say instead, I will do anything in my power to keep [insert something you detest and despise] from taking over my life.

I happen to be one of the former types, plagued all my born days (at least, as far back as I can remember) with pain. Painful touch. Painful movement. Painful just about everything. The only times I have been pain-free have been in the extremes of human experience — when I am either so deeply engrossed in what I am doing that my focus blocks out any sensation at all… when I am pushing myself beyond my limits to see how far I can go… when I am so deeply relaxed and entranced that nothing of human experience can penetrate the divine aura that surrounds me.

In those extreme places, I am free of pain, I am more than myself, I am a piece of a very, very, very large puzzle that dwarfs discomfort with its vastness.

But one cannot always live in the extremes. I’m neither a cloistered monastic, nor a sheltered academic, nor a professional athlete, nor a maverick rock climber. I am a regular person with a regular life, and that life just happens to be fraught — at times — with almost constant pain.

Ask me if I have a headache on any given day, and my answer will not be “yes” or “no”, but “what kind of headache?” and “where precisely do you mean?” It’s a given, that my  head will hurt. And my body, too. It’s just a question of degrees.

At its worst, the pain is debilitating. 20 years ago, I had to stop working and drop out of life for about 5 years to get myself back on my feet. Over the decades since then, the pain has fluctuated, its impact on my life varying. The variation has been due, in no small part, to my mental determination to not let it stop me. In many cases, I refused to even acknowledge it, even though objectively I knew it was there. I went for years telling myself  I was pain-free, while at night I would be forced to stretch and press points up and down my legs and take plenty of Advil to get myself past the searing ache in my legs, hips, and back.

Denial is a funny thing — so useful, so essential, at times, and so easily used, even when facts to the contrary are obvious and intrusive.

Over the past several years, however, as I’ve become more and more cognizant of my TBI-related issues, pain has made itself known to me, and I have ceased to deny it. It’s a double-edged sword, that. Even if I don’t deny it and am determined to do something about it, my plans don’t always work, and I cannot always accomplish the level of pain control I would like.

In those moments when my honesty is far more than my ability to deal effectively with my discomfort, I curse my newfound determination to be upfront and frank about every little thing that is amiss with me. I have so many other issues to think about — do I need to add unstoppable, unmanageable, uncontrollable pain to the mix? Wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense, to acknowledge and focus on issues I can actually fix?

But now that the lid is off Pandora’s box, there’s no sticking it back on. I have to address this pain situation, I have to do something about it. I cannot just sit around and boo-hoo. Nor can I run away from it and keep telling myself it’s not an issue. It is an issue. A very sticky, troubling, problematic one that holds me back, perhaps more than any other issue I have. It’s not just physical, it’s emotional and psychological, too. And it demands acknowledgement and work, to address it.

So, I do. I get up in the morning — like it or not — and I exercise. I roll my aching, complaining body out of bed, pull on my sweatshirt over my pajamas, slip my feet into my slippers, grab my clipboard and pen, and I haul my ass downstairs. I fill the kettle with water, put it on the stove, and turn the knob to 3 or 4, to give myself plenty of time to work out before the water boils. Then I pull the curtains in the room where the exercise bike is, so I can work out in private, put my clipboard on the magazine holder on the exercise bike, climb on, make a note of the time I started, and I begin to pedal.

I ride for at least 20 minutes — 15, if I’m really behind in my schedule — and I work up a sweat. I hate and resent the first 10 minues of every ride. It is boring. It is monotonous. It is sheer drudgery. But it is necessary. If I don’t exercise, move lymph through my veins (the milky white substance that moves toxins out of our systems doesn’t move on its own — it requires circulation to clear out the junk we put in), and oxygenate my brain.

After the first 10 minutes, my brain has started to wake up and is complaining less about the ride. About that time, I start to think of things I’m going to do for the day, and I start to make notes. I scribble on my clipboard, trying to control my handwriting well enough to read my notes later, and I make an effort to be careful and legible. On and off, I pick up my pace and push myself, working up a sweat and an oxygen debt that gets my lungs pumping. When I’m warmed up and getting into a groove, my mind wakes up even more, and I let it wander a bit — kind of like letting a squirrelly puppy off its lead when you take it for a walk in the park. I let my thoughts ramble, let my mind race here and there, and then like walking a puppy, I eventually call it back, focus once more on my day, and make more notes about what I need to accomplish.

When I’ve reached my 20-30 minute mark, I stop pedaling, get off the bike, and go check on my hot water. I turn up the heat, if it’s not already boiling, and stretch in the kitchen while the kettle starts to rumble. When the whistle goes, I make myself a cup of strong coffee, and while it’s cooling, I stretch some more. I drink a big glass of water as I stretch, feeling the muscles and tendons and fascia giving way to my insistence. I’m warmed up, after pedaling, so I can stretch more easily. I can move a lot better than when I got out of bed, and I’m actually starting to feel pretty good about doing this exercise thing, as soon as I get up.

Once I’ve stretched, I head back to the exercise room and lift my dumbbells. I work with 5 pound weights (for now), moving slowly and deliberately. I focus intently on my form — practicing my impulse control. I make sure my body is aligned properly and my motions are smooth and not stressing my joints and ligaments and tendons. There’s no point in exercising if I’m going to just injure myself. I do a full range of upper-body exercises, presses, curls, flys, extensions, pull-ups… all the different ways I can move my arms with my 5-lb dumbbells, I work into the third part of my routine. I take my time — deliberately, for discipline and focus and impulse control are big problems for me that really get in my way — and I work up a sweat as I hold certain positions and move far more slowly than I prefer.

When all is said and done, my legs are a little wobbly and my upper body is warm with exertion. I am sweating and a little out of breath, and my body is starting to work overtime to catch up with itself again.

By the time I’m done, my coffee has cooled enough to drink it, and I can make myself a bowl of cereal and cut up an apple to eat.  I sit down with my clipboard again, make more notes, review what I need to accomplish, and I get on with my day.

The days when I skimp on the effort and take it easy, are the days when I am in the most pain at the end of the day. The days when I really push myself with my weights, moving sloooooowly through the motions and keeping myself to a strict form, are the days when I have the most energy and am feeling the most fluid. The days when I don’t stretch very much, are the days I have trouble falling asleep at night. And the days when I do stretch are the ones when I am able to just crash into bed and am down like a log all night.

Two days, this past week, I did not do my workout full justice, and I paid dearly for it, the rest of both days. I learned my lesson. I haul myself out of bed, now, and I hold myself to a disciplined workout. Anything less gets me in trouble.

I’ve got enough trouble, without the pain on top of it. And if there is any way I can cut back on whatever complications I can, I’ll do what I can to do just that.

It’s hard to start, it can be tedious to do, and it often feels like an interruption to my morning, but without it, my day is toast. And I am lost at sea… floating in a brine of burning, searing agony that surely must have informed the medieval concept of eternal hellfire and brimstone.

And yet, something so simple can push back the waves, like Moses parted the Red Sea. Something so simple, so basic, so good for me. Salvation comes in strange packages, sometimes. But it’s salvation nonetheless, so I’ll take it.

After all, I’ve got much better things to do with my life than suffer needlessly.

Getting back into it…

I had a pretty rough weekend, and thank heaven it was a holiday. Gave me time to rest and recoup. I’ve been bothered increasingly by a lot of pain — “tactile hyperesthesia” I’m told it’s called. And it’s been driving me nuts. My clothes hurt me, any physical contact bothers me, and I have a hell of a time interacting with other folks who are demonstrative and like to reach out and touch you when they’re talking to you.

Times like these, I notice how tactile women are when they communicate. They reach out and touch you a lot more than men do, and it’s not only distracting, it’s also painful.

Small wonder, I tend to avoid the company of women unless there’s some structured activity going on. I’ve got nothing against women, but being around people who make a habit of making physical contact with you, when physical contact is painful, isn’t my idea of a great time. No matter how much I want to be around them, no matter how much I like them, no matter how much they want to be around me and like me, the simple fact of my sensitivities is distracting and uncomfortable and makes it very hard to interact.

With men, there’s less contact, but the ones with whom I have a good relationship also tend to make contact — handshakes, touching my arm or shoulder to get my attention, slapping me on the back… Ugh! The classic male prohibition against making physical contact with others might be poo-poohed in enlightened circles, but for me, it’s a huge relief.

The same goes for dealing with people in a highly structured corporate environment. Being in a working situation where roles are very clearly defined, and there is a code of conduct that everyone sticks with, no matter what, makes things that much easier to deal with in the course of each day. I’ve tried working for small companies and start-ups that had a more “family” feel to them. What a nightmare it was for me! Words cannot express. I ended up flaming out, several times, melting down and screwing up everything within reach, leaving those companies behind without any good explanation for why I was coming apart at the seams. The lack of structure and the “family feel” with its personal, intimate tone, seemed to be comforting for a lot of folks I worked with, but for me, it was a nightmare.

Me? I like an impersonal, detached corporate environment where nobody knows much of anything about each other’s personal lives, and nobody ever makes physical contact with each other. Call me stunted, call me damaged, call me asocial. That’s what works for me. Give me structure, and I get to be human. Remove that structure, and I start to unravel.

Anyway, I’m getting ready right now for heading out to become human at my massive multi-national corporate employer, meanwhile thinking about how to approach a new personal project I’m working on. It’s a program for tracking my issues each day. I had wanted to do it with one type of technology, but that’s turning out to be less fitting for my purposes. I need to use a different type of technology, a different programming language, which I have not been able to learn for the last 4-5 years. I started to learn it, around the time of my fall in 2004, but since then, I haven’t been able to make any headway.

Now it looks like I’m going to have to. I have no choice — this language is the only one I can use for my purposes. So, I have to learn it. And I’m freaked out. Because I’m not sure I can.

But I have to remember that I’ve recently taught myself the ins and outs of another programming language which had also eluded me for a number of years. And I am pretty proficient in it, by now. So, logically speaking, there is hope. I have to have hope. I have to believe — no, not believe, but actually know — that I have the ability to learn this stuff. Even if I have trouble reading and remembering what I read. Even if I have trouble following sequences. Even if I have trouble concentrating for extended periods of time. I was able to learn that other language. using my own learning style and a lot of unconventional approaches, and the only thing keeping me from learning this new language, is me and my reluctance to start.

So, I’ve got to start. Get myself back in the game. It’s the end of a long weekend, and the fall season is just around the corner. The five-year anniversary of my last TBI accident (and the 14-year anniversary of one of my earlier TBIs) is coming up.  I’ve been working my way back, slowly but surely, and things are looking up.

Life is good. I can get back.  And so I shall.