My Best Friend My best friend is I guarantee like no one else you have ever met before. He is always with me every day of every single hour of my life, and has been for the last thirty two years. Some would say I am crazy for embracing my friend as I do. I learned a few years after meeting him though that he would forever be a huge part of my life. Some days I would like to kick him to the curb and disown him for life. Other days he is what lets me know I am still alive. I have come up with quotes to help me live with my friend in his worst of times and in mine. As he and I are forever together for the rest of my life. I guess I should introduce him to you, his name is Pain. Yes, you heard me right my best friend is Pain. We met before I was even a teenager. I decided a couple years after meeting Pain that I had the choice to embrace him or spend a life time fighting with him. I label Pain as him because, men are strong and women are usually physically weaker than men. I know this all probably sounds really crazy to most of you and you do not understand. I hope I can help you understand our relationship a bit better when I am done with our story. I was diagnosed at age twelve with rapid onset rotor scoliosis. You are shaking your head I see you now! What is that you are wondering? It is a disease of the spine. Your spine can curve into a simple C shape or an S shape as mine did. Normally adolescents are the ones it inflicts and if caught early enough can be fixed without surgery. Mine it was a little different it had what I like to call an entity all its own. In a matter of weeks it went from a dull ache to where I had issues breathing. I started to become disfigured. I am sure most of you have seen someone with scoliosis before and just didn’t know it. One shoulder usually is higher than the other and sometimes there hips are twisted; one leg can be shorter than the other so they limp along. For me I needed surgery mine was crushing my heart and lungs and killing me. Normally this is a gradual progression; unfortunately for me mine was not. I had specialist baffled by how rapidly my spine was curving. It went from a mere 19 degree curve in my upper spine and a 11 degree curve in my lower spine when it was first found in a school screening. To twenty eight days later it had increased to a forty three degree curve in my upper spine and twenty seven in my lower spine. One week later I was having surgery at Emanuel Legacy Hospital in Portland, Oregon. I was terrified by all that was happening. I had nightmares that they were going to kill me. Then it got worse they woke me up during surgery to make sure I was not paralyzed. Have you seen a movie called “Awake”? Well it is about being awake during a surgery and no one knows it but you. You are lying there unable to speak or move, but you feel and know everything that is happening. This is what happened to me that day. I spent the next ten days in the hospital and then was placed in a body cast from my ears to my ass. I would need to be in this for twelve long months. The doctors told me that by the tender age of thirty I would be in a wheel chair. I am proud to say that day has come and gone and I am still walking today. This is how pain and I met. He would forever be a part of my life. My choices were to give in and let him consume me or I could learn to coincide with him in the same body we both inhabit. He has been trying the last four years to dominate my body to the best of his ability! I have been fighting back with medicine, bio-feedback and anything else I can help him with. Most of all he is my best friend and I find as long as I embrace him and help him he will do the same for me. He reminds me that I am alive! As so eloquently put in G. I. Jane , pain lets you know you are still alive. Another quote or poem by Robert Frost: I never seen a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. Another one is from the USMC I actually won the shirt with the saying on it for pain and I to share. It says “ pain is weakness leaving the body! Pain and I will always be the best of friends! Written By: A. James
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 02:53:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015