RE: Goreans with Disabilities- Support, Advice, Info, V... - 4/16/2008 5:22:06 AM
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Karynn
Posts: 773
Joined: 6/8/2007
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Hello everyone - everyone who's got a pain and not sure how to talk to a doctor or if it is serious enough to talk to a doctor and may be reading this thread - I thought I'd pause and write some encouraging and helpful thoughts to help you decide if you fit into this group. I've noticed a few people asking, 'If I feel this or that, am I allowed to post here?'
Almost everyone's natural instinct when dealing with pain is self-preservation. Many will do it on their own for many years before ever mentioning an issue to a doctor. Men (and women) may avoid speaking up about pain because they were raised in a generation where the father, the coach, the uncle, the professor, all said, "Stop complaining, tough it out and get back into life." They were also raised in a time where men (primarily) were told to handle pain with an expressionless disposition that allowed no one to know they were in pain. Women have a different pyschological approach to pain and perhaps submissive women have even more unique ways of dealing with it. In general, women hide pain so that they're not seen as a burden to their loved ones. They don't want to worry their children. They don't want to alarm friends at work. They don't want to air dirty laundry. And in the submissive's case, any event in their life that impedes their direct and immediate ability to provide service goes under the table and hidden from view in exchange for pushing through the pain to meet the goals and expectations of their ownership or their sense of what a slave "should do."
If you've experienced pain that lasts longer in duration than a few days, it's something worth noticing. If you're experiencing new pain that's more intense than what used to exist in the same location, it's something worth noticing. Say you injured your knee, tore a tendon partially, and it healed. You were 18, the captain of the wrestling team, and you just dealt with it. At 18, your body was still quite able to regenerate cells quickly and you were feeling better in no time. Some years later, you go out in the yard with your 4 year old son to toss the ball, and just as you plant your foot, your knee slides and jars that old tendon tear. It's an area of your body that was weak then, but now you're 26, and you've retorn it. The ability to heal as quickly has changed. You're a different age. You're also not all about me. You have a 4 year old dependent on you being balanced. You're probably the stronger one, so you're lifting the 4 year old, carrying him around, and now with a torn tendon that's inflamed, each time you step and plant your foot, something in the back of your mind says, "I could fall if my knee popped now." My advice... don't wait till you've gone from I'm fine to I could fall. Somewhere in the middle of that is a logical time to at least see the family physician. Really.
True disability is defined as an event that interrupts life's normal patterns. Back to the injury idea. When you break your arm, your life pattern is interrupted but almost all breaks heal naturally within 6 - 8 weeks. Your target goal is to deal with the inconvenience those 6 - 8 weeks, then return to life. It's when something occurs in life that interrupts life's normal patterns for a long period. Some illnesses are rediagnosed after 6 mo - like depression for example - and treated as long term at that point. Post partum blues have a small expected window of time. If the depression lingers after that window, it then becomes a disability instead of post partum. A car accident can really mess up your legs. You might have to relearn the skills of walking, balance, climbing stairs, and so forth. The full recovery time for breaks in the legs go from 6 mo to a year. The full recovery time for pelvic breaks can last up to 3 years. If either of those recovery times come and go, and a patient is still unable to move back into a normal life pattern that existed for them prior to the accident, they will be moved from short term pain management techniques to long term or chronic pain management.
As someone already pointed out, disabilities come in all forms. There are congenital handicaps, meaning you're born with it. Some are born deaf. Others lose their hearing after a roadside bomb goes off in Iraq. Regardless of when the person loses hearing, once it is gone, it is a disability. Some people are born with no legs. Others have legs severed in work accidents. Either way, learning to cope with the loss of a leg is learning to cope with a disability. Handicaps affect every sense, every system in the body, and every perception in the mind. Identifying the source of a problem helps identify the disability and treat it. It's really important to be willing to discuss it with your physician in order to the the best treatment the soonest.
Every moment you wait, gritting your teeth and bearing it, could be moments you take away from your life down the road. If you allow a minor spider bite to get infected, eventually you could lose your arm. If you allow a minor depression to consume your life, you could eventually lose your mind. Even if your chronic pain or disability isn't progressive, meaning if it isn't getting worse as time passes, ignoring it still brings about long term damage. Pain takes energy to manage. If you get a headache, it can ruin an entire day. Everyone's been there and done that. If you have chronic pain, it's not just one afternoon ruined. It can be days, weeks, months, and you're more and more and more frustrated. Your physical frustration will manifest in tight muscles, joints and tendons, overcompensating other parts of the body to preserve the area in pain and eventually cause damage to parts of your body that weren't initially involved. Your emotional frustration is perhaps even a bigger risk. That whole grin and bear it concept has an upside, for sure, but it also creates a bank of problems down the road. If you know you're overdrafted in your bank account, it isn't wise to keep writing checks. You don't have the means to make good on those checks. You might be able to grin and bear it, make others think you're fine, for a while. Eventually, the fact that you have no personal reserves stored up inside your mind shows up in odd ways. You might snap and scream at a child. You might let your boss know what you really think. It's like suddenly and surely, your overload blows all the circuits at once and you can't predict where you're going to let loose until it happens.
Everyone's threshhold is different. Some people endure far more discomfort before they're really in pain. Other people have fragile nervous systems and the slightest touch bruises skin and causes pain. Only you can know if your difficulty in life qualifies as a disability. No one here should try to assess someone else's disability and/or right to be here. Since disabilities are so personal, some may not even feel like trying to explain what their disability is, but still need to vent or discuss coping. At that point, all the rest of us can do is share from our own experience and hope those reading can glean useful tidbits from our openness. Even if five of us have exactly the same diagnosis, the likelihood that our bodies are experiencing that diagnosis exactly the same way is unreasonable. I've seen at least 4 people now express they have fibromyalgia for example. I don't think for a moment I know exactly how that person feels now since I ahve it too. I can commisserate with them in a more personal manner because I DO have it too. Mine isn't theirs, but mine is relative, and that comradery of knowing I'm not the only one suffering with it helps, and I hope in turn helps them too.
My heart is poured out to each of you as you share. I add you to my mental list for prayer and meditation, sending you the energy of angels or white energy while I share in your pain from a more literal personal understanding. I wish each of you well and a day with as little pain as possible.
My best,
K
_____________________________
In all things, to thine own self be true.
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