Rage and the Pain

I have had it! I am so fed up that I find it hard to care that things can always get worse. Certain people in my life - on the extreme verges of it anyway - have lost their tenuous hold on reality. Certain people is, of course, code for my parents. It's not very good code if I give it away but that's how angry I am. I am sick to the point of wondering how soon I will die and they have used the excuse of the great flood to hold my feet to the fire. They seem to expect me to sort through 12 years of my life here and pack up what I want to keep in the veritable blink of an eye. Since I know I want to leave and I decided to be honest with them, they have lost all pretense of civility.

For a little while, I saw things through their eyes. I'm this terrible disappointment and all. The truth is that they made me top to bottom. I'm good at certain things because I had to be in order to survive all the emotional child abuse. That's right! I'm calling a spade a spade. They are damned lucky that I didn't open my mouth when I was a child. I'm sure it's too late to sue them now for creating this thing that lurks inside of me.

What thing is that? I'm talking about the urge to kill myself. After my latest conversation with them when I let them do all the talking, I curled up into a metaphorical ball and fell to pieces. That's when I used one of those survival skills that they taught me. I attacked the problem with logic which is something inaccessible to insane people. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the insane people. Who would benefit from my death? Allow me an agnostic moment so I can question my sure acceptance into heaven. My religion has certain problems with suicide anyway so I might not have to have that agnostic moment but that's what it feels like. My wife loves me so she would be devastated. Even my most optimistic projections would involve her going through hell on earth before her life got better again. The only people who would benefit would be my parents so that sorta kills the revenge motive. Why does the urge to die by my own hand still haunt me? If it isn't based on logic, I believe it is based on all those years of being brainwashed into believing I am worthless.

"The only thing I have to offer is my brain," said my dear mother and father. Guess what? Thanks to their genes or some long denied mistake my mother made while I was in the womb, my brain is fucked up! They seem to believe that there is some way of making me better but I'm avoiding it because I prefer this life. Let's attack those two points separately. First off, my second surgeon may be the foremost expert in the world in my condition. He told me to my face that there is nothing else he can even try to improve my condition. There was a possibility but further testing showed that it might very well kill me. Medical ethics prevent him from trying the surgery even if I were willing to risk an unacceptable chance of death. We're not talking about dying from an unanticipated complication. The actual surgical objective would be what killed me. Game over!

The second part of their apparent belief is the one that truly annoys me. I do my very best to make the best of everything but my life sucks! Your lives probably suck to the same degree if you are the fellow chronic pain patients that this is intended for. We don't have the option of lying down and dying so we make the best of things. We use the tools given to us for as long as they are available. My father's kind gift of cable TV was much appreciated as a tool to help me through the worst pain. When he pulled it back, I was careful to say nothing unkind because I don't walk in his shoes. He might very well be struggling to make ends meet and hiding it from me. The same thing applies to the reduced rent that we were given while living here.

My mother had the gall to tell me that I can't afford to live where I am now. It's part of the miserable shame game that they have played with me for as long as I can remember. Then again, I was pleased to hear that she had paid off the mortgage and that my meager contributions were covering the association fees, the taxes and the homeowner's insurance. I was exceptionally pleased that I was not putting them through any hardship. That's a laugh. My mother is hoisted upon her own petard. She needs to learn better insulting skills from her husband.

Her intent was to show me how dependent I'd been on their generosity but I knew that already. I gave her the opening by expressing surprise at the actual rates being charged out there. My intent was to praise her for the generosity but to reinforce my reasons for needing to leave. I offered them nothing but honesty and the sort of criticism of my packing performance that you learn being raised like I was. Nothing I do is right and nothing can deflect criticism. I should just die for them...just kidding.

There is a reason why I use every tool I'm offered. I live in pain the likes I doubt either of them has ever felt possibly barring my mother going through labor pains. It takes practice to let the background pain go and save my breakthrough pain meds for the times when they are needed. My choice is to curl up into a literal ball and moan all day. This is very hard on the vocal cords as experience taught me.

Getting through the easiest of days is an accomplishment for me and for my readers in chronic pain. We have to ignore the unintentional advice of those who would just take handfuls of pills and kill their livers or those who say they would go insane. It's tough to stay sane in the commonly used sense although actual clinical sanity is stronger than you might think. In the commonly used sense, my parents drive me insane whenever they touch my life.

Getting through those easy days requires concentrating on the requirements of life as a chronic pain patient. We need to follow our prescribed medicinal routines. I actually have to use my tablet computer to track my one medication used once every three days or risk days like today. On top of all the wild pain from the wet weather outside, I felt this awful electrical tingling in my muscles. When I took the risk of not blocking it out, I realized it was the familiar sensation of not changing my patch on time. Oops. My bad. I paid for it.

One of the things we chronic pain patients need to do is get regular rest including more sleep than the average person. Knowing that my family may decide to contact me at any given moment deprives me of regular sleep. I find myself not wanting to let my mind drift because I find myself lingering on the insults my father delivers on a regular basis when he contacts me at all. Let's think of a recent insult from as recently as yesterday. "You just sat around in that hotel room and didn't think to come and clean up."

Okay. I was silent about this on the phone because I didn't think you had the lack of sense to say such a thing. The "pipe" burst on a Saturday afternoon. For days before that, I was so tormented by weather related pain that I got little useful rest. My chance to sleep was disturbed by a river flowing out the bathroom door and a collapsed ceiling downstairs. Nonetheless, Melissa and I reacted rationally. We called the insurance company to get our marching orders. Was it even safe to remain in the house?

The insurance company reacted rationally and sent out a water damage mitigation service. It was Service Master and I had seen their TV ads run before. I mention them by name here because their tech did every single thing he could to do his job and make things easier on Melissa and me. However, having a stranger in the house pulling down what was left of the first floor ceiling, running assorted drying equipment and making a hell of a lot of noise was traumatic. It would have been traumatizing to anyone which makes it 100 times worse for any chronic pain patient. Once again, I know this from experience obviously.

The insurance adjuster pulled through for us and got a very nice hotel room for us. It got upgraded to a suite by another very kind company. I got there Wednesday night and spent the rest of the week recovering. By the time we reached the weekend, I had recovered enough to worry. Yes, I recovered enough from the trauma to experience severe stress. Why had I not received any marching orders? On Monday, I called to ask for them but the adjuster was busy dealing with a tornado catastrophe. On Tuesday, I received a false alarm that sent me spiralling down into near collapse again but it seemed to work itself out.

That's when I got the truly bad news. My father was involved and calling the shots. It took my own father two days to return my phone call and that Thursday call involved no marching orders. On Friday, he called me to insult Melissa and me which I took in my usual silence. There were no practical instructions given. Was it safe to return home? I didn't know anything so please forgive my pathetic ignorance. On Monday, we managed to return home and get me through pain doc day which featured a freaky storm that took me from feeling good for me to almost landing on the floor. The medical staff was suitably freaked out since none of us looked out the window. We assumed it was still sunny. Regular readers will know what even the best pain doc appointments do to me.

I can't remember the exact day I got my marching orders but I started following them immediately. I was already sorting out and removing trash so that left me books to pack. I built a box that the contractor provided kindly and packed it. It took a lot out of me but I felt no sense of achievement. My father wanted the job done not done realistically. Thus, I tried to continue and mostly ended up on the floor a lot. Despite this, I continued my work.

That brings me to the final insult and the one that bothers me the most. "What's Melissa doing while she's off? So, she's working nine days straight with roving days off? That leaves time to get things done." I know you don't care but Melissa is sicker than she lets people see. Thankfully, she can sleep through almost anything so she gets enough rest to stay in the fight at work. She just got a top notch review from work and we're on a promotion track. (She doesn't mind when I say we despite the fact that she's the one doing all the work. I love that about her.) Due to her chronic and likely progressing illnesses, that leaves her little time or energy for anything else.

To paraphrase a movie, don't mess with her if you want to have a fight over toughness. She's far too good for you. Stick with me as your victim. Then again, my name is John Stapleford and I'm getting you out of my life. ("My name is Andrew Sheppard and I AM the President.") I just hope you don't send me to my grave first.

Exactly What You Need

I have written before about things that could be done to help me cope with my disabilities but I never thought things would get this exciting. Two Saturdays ago, I thought I heard a downpour in my sleep. Then, I looked up at the bright sunshine in my face and realized something was very wrong. I found the source of the flood and shut it off between the wall and the toilet. Crisis averted, right?

When I went downstairs, the ceiling was on the floor. A big piece of ceiling was where my head normally rests when I nap. I had decided to go to sleep in bed for once. I was joking about this being a good thing but you might call it a miracle. No one was hurt. The insurance company has done a good job helping me so far.

Unfortunately, five miserable days followed. I am badly affected by things like noise, stress and strangers around me. Water damage mitigation is all about those things. On the day when they finished, my insurance company got me out of the house and into a beautiful hotel room. This exceptional company will be the topic of another entry about those few companies that go beyond being merely handicap accessible.

Things seemed to be going well until I was notified that the man of my nightmares was in charge of the decisions concerning house repairs.

While there might be a certain degree of misunderstanding involved, the man holds me and my little family in contempt. Melissa and I realized that we wanted to live elsewhere. The man of my nightmares was only about third on our list of reasons why. The main reason is my health. I fall on the stairs at least once a day. Sooner or later, I will land on my head and die. The stairs are painful even when I don't fall.

We need a smaller place with reliable maintenance. I can't live here so I have to find a smaller place.