Chronically Changed

https://www.wattpad.com/story/257474562-chronically-changed?utm_source=web&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share_myworks

A short poem about how living with Chronic Pain changes people and their lives as they once knew it.

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Chronically Changed

Briefing: Chronic Pain Changes People, Always Remember to be kind.

All these illnesses I endure, the many difficulties I am faced with. Things that normal people have no idea what it would be like to live in my body. They wish they could take the pain from me, a pain I wouldn’t give to my worst enemy. Pain that they truly have no idea what I am going through simply because if I told the truth as I was experiencing the symptoms, I would be looked at as a whiner, a complainer and someone seeking attention. So, when I am asked how I am feeling, I simply respond, I’m ok.

I remember looking at people parked in a handicap spot that looked fine. That is until I found myself parking in a handicap spot using my very own handicap placard. Most of the times my symptoms do not present themselves to the naked eye. I do get redness and swelling, but I try for the most part to keep that part hidden. The muscle pain, the bone pain, the chronic fatigue the throbbing migraine are all invisible. The migraine that causes vomiting and sensitivity to light, the back pain that enables me from walking upright most times, the bags under my eyes from days without sleep, the exhaustion from being chronically fatigued shows on my face.

Days filled with sitting back and watching tv, talking to yourself within the walls that you find yourself surrounded by daily. The distance chronic pain steals from you with your friends, your family, becomes more spaced and less invites to eventually moving on without including you. Chronic pain changes everything in the lives of those who suffer with it and the ones they love around them. There is no discrimination against age or sex, if Chronic Pain wants you, it will have you. Like a crawling monster leaving no traces of the life you once knew, it’s all gone like a blink of an eye, leaving you to grieve the life you once had. The body that you once would be able to do so much in, is now a horrible shell of useless body parts and limbs that will never work the way they once used too.

The electric shocks coming from your neck into your spine and down your arms, into your wrists and hands. Leaving you unable to move, unable to do anything than cry out in pain. The daily headaches that turn into migraines, a ware being fought within your brain and body that you have no control over. All you can do is brace yourself and hope it passes soon. The adding up the number of days in which sleep overlooked you, leaving you more tired and irritable and lashing out at the ones who love you and just want to help. You find yourself getting short tempered and unwillingly to compromise because you’ve done too much resting you just want the chance to do, to be able to do anything than lounge and rest and binge watch movies and tv shows. Your life as you imagined it, all changed, in every aspect, some good as you have to learn to listen to your body, you need to rest when it needs it, and you gain an unequivocal amount of compassion and empathy towards others that are battle chronic pain and illnesses as well. There will be bad days when you can’t even get yourself out of bed or be able to wipe yourself after you use the restroom, or being able to swallow without choking, yes even on water and saliva. Each day not knowing what the next day will be like, never knowing what each day will offer you the ability to do or not to do. So many changes that engulf your everyday decision making, having you to make choices for you the best that you can make for each day that will not throw your body into a flare, that can last days to get out of. Normal people try and sympathize with us chronically ill sufferers. They have no idea that it takes more energy to be able to just do normal things like shower, or bathe, or to get dressed or brush your hair. Planning meals around your chronic pain is a challenge as each day you will be faced with new obstacles and some days you will be forced to look the same obstacles in the eye and overcome them, you just never know which day you will get when it comes. So, you live in that moment, cause living in that moment you have control of what you are going through. I noticed that I try and control the clutter around me, I am constantly cleaning and wiping things down because those are things that I can control. I can’t control the functions that my body fails me on during the day, the lack of compassion and the dumb comments that come from my loved ones asking if I am in still in pain, despite the number of times that I tell them I will always be in pain and that I will never be pain free because what I have there is no cure for. It’s a toss-up each day, there are days where loneliness gets the best of us, then there are days that the quiet cannot be enough, and the people you love you just want to silence to gain that little bit of quietness again. Then it’s the feelings of sadness, the grief of the life you wanted and the life you are offering to your loved ones, the burden you feel when you must ask for help. The look of sadness and concern on your families faces when you are in so much pain and lose all use of limbs and begin to shake uncontrollably and vomit because the pain just becomes too unbearable, they want to help, they ask if I’m ok, I simply say yeah, because there is nothing, they can physically do to take this pain away. I feel myself slipping into more pain days than good days, especially when the weather is colder and there is more moisture in the air as rain or snow. Those are the days I long to be living in a warmer climate so I can have some normalcy back in the life I once knew, a life that seems so far off like it was so long ago, when really it was just years, years of changes, and years of therapy and injections and countless medications, some worked, most didn’t, some I didn’t even bother to take since I knew that I would just be harming my insides with and not getting any relief from. Chronic pain has changed me. It changes the way I view others; it changes the way I view myself, the way I hear things, the way I interact with others, every aspect it stills a little of the old me I used to be and replaces it with the new person I find myself standing in front of the mirror not even knowing who this person is looking back at. The sadness in its eyes, the tiredness all over its face, that person can’t be me? I once loved going places, anywhere but then to be home, now the place I call home is my place of comfort, where I find myself locked into for days and days at a time until I must emerge to go to the doctors or run a quick errand. The person sitting in the passenger seat looking in the mirror is excited yet scared of the world that is changing and is not so kind to people that live with chronic pain. The looks of disgust when I park in a handicap spot, the look of disgust when I use my cane or have difficulty walking, or dropping things because my hands refuse to work, these are just some of the changes the chronic ill are faced with. You ever hear I wish I could stay home it’d be like a vacation? Well, let me tell you, living like this is far from a vacation, you have no breaks, you have no relief from day to day aches and pains, you get to live in a body that fails you every day and every day you have to fight to be normal, appear as normal as you can so that you don’t be a burden to anyone and that they don’t worry about you too much, or that they don’t see your cry of pain as always complaining and whining. It changes you, every aspect of your life it changes you. It strengthens you when you didn’t know that you had that much strength in you, to fight each day a battle you are never able to win fully. It compels you to become more opened to others that are battling chronic pain, you become closed off to the world and those who don’t understand your illness. You get angry, irritated, little sounds aggravate you, things that were once not a bother are now suddenly annoying you. Along with that is the anxiety and depression, the insomnia, days and days of sleepless nights. Constant agony of being in pain, clothes hurt to touch your body yet being exposed hurts even worse. You constantly critic yourself, constantly worried about being judged for everything that you are no longer able to do. People who once invited you to go out, simply stop asking and eventually just stop coming around. You always have to find yourself questioning if you are doing too much, that will put you in a flare. Weather effects your limbs, and you can better predict the weather than the paid weathermen on the tv. You find yourself crying out missing the old you, the you, who had no worries other than what to make for dinner and what bills needed paid when. Now you worry about having to shower, and wipe when you can’t physically do it yourself. Lifting a coffee mug to your face becomes too hard, that you compromise and get adaptable dishware to better make your life easier. You adjust and adjust until you are completely dependent upon things and other people, losing yourself each day little by little. Every day is different, every day has a new battle that must be fought, mostly in silence, sometimes invisible to the naked eye of what battle you are fighting, but inside your body is a battle that is being fought against you growing bigger and bigger, hurting you more and more each time it flares. Some days, meds work, others they don’t even touch the pain. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, and it would make any normal person suffer unconsolably if they had to go through what my body endures daily.

So yes, I am chronically changed, yet still me deep within this body that fails me. So, remember to be kind, always, you never know what someone is going through, what battles they are fighting that you know nothing about. It costs nothing to be kind and is so greatly rewarded.