The Pain Diaries

This week the kids in my son's class had a bake sale for an orphanage in Guatemala called Project Somos. I was thrilled at how well they did, raising $280 dollars. I was hoping that since I've been doing some baking with them they would be keen to bake at home and I was pleased that most of the items were home made. I don't understand why you would bring store bought sweets to a bake sale, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I love that one of the kids brought mango pudding squares because he loves them. The kids gobbled them up and they were gone in no time.

I also loved that this was a "coming of age" ritual for these students. They've always been the little kids lined up for the goodies and this was the first time they were in charge. They also learned lessons about deferred pleasure as they had to wait for the whole school to purchase their items before they joined the line.

Valentine's Day is a great time to take on this kind of a project, marking the day as one of caring for each other on a global scale, and celebrating peace and compassionate citizenship.

Speaking of compassion, I have been thinking about pain recently. I heard a documentary about a singer that I used to follow whose career has been interrupted for several years because of chronic and debilitating pain. I also heard a doctor who specializes in pain say that medicine is very far behind in the treatment of pain as a disorder and a pathology of its own. He was very proactive on the ethics of treating people in pain with dignity and said that doctors have an ethical responsibility to help people who are suffering.

I get dragged down because I have developed chronic back pain that is affecting my mobility as I age. Once in a while I get a wake up call that I have to do something about it, but my doctor has never really offered me any help with it. I had a set back when my massage therapist moved away from Vancouver. So it's back to the drawing board. Now that my migraine pain is tamed down, I need to focus on fixing my back again. One gets used to living with a certain level of pain and copes with it, thinking that there's not much you can do about it.

Pain affects your personality and identity. Some days it makes me very cynical and irritable, but on the whole I think my experiences with pain have helped me to develop a sense of empathy. I know how much energy and attention the pain dragon takes out of your day. My massage therapist told me I was "a fighter," which is another thing that develops from the struggle with pain. Not many people really understand just how much my body hurts until they work with me on the massage table. Pain demands a kind of respect. Having this physical weakness also makes me a vulnerable person and keeps me humble. Sometimes I am too tired to fight and so I just shut down as a survival mechanism. Most days I work around the pain, but I know that I'm going to have to dive right in there soon and face the dragon again.