Pain Changes Everything

Let me tell you like I told my husband on Saturday: pain changes everything. I have been so very blessed to have not known much pain with my recurrence and continued fight. I would have episodes....."bad days"......as I was told by Janet, but have been basically pain-free in this long, long marathon we are running. I have always been up for the task, ready for anything, gung-ho and forging ahead. Then, suddenly I met my match and he is PAIN.

Pain keeps me from getting out of bed or getting a good night's sleep. Pain keeps me from the car, a walk, my dogs, my life. I am growing into my sofa like an outcropping of fungi. I desperately search for the right combination of pills to make me functional, to offer relief and distraction, to feel like I felt just one short month ago before all this started.
I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but I miss my chemo. My old friend whom I knew how to face and handle and recover from. I cannot wait to get back. Back to Asheville Avenue. Back to a routine I can live with. The two weeks that now loom in front of me for radiation seem ridiculously long. My bones suddenly seem ridiculously diseased. Even though the cancer has been there, lurking since 2004, the bone mets have reared their ugly head for the first time and they have been a force to be reckoned with.

So as I sit hear this morning, hoping to make it through Thanksgiving dinner without letting anyone know about the pain, I count myself so, so lucky. I am lucky because I have been in the dark all this time about the pain. I am so lucky that God has had His hand on me, protecting me from times like this when He knew all along the trials that the pain will present. I pray now that we will face the pain...stare it down...conquer it like everything else, and move forward.

Dr. Nancy, my radiation oncologist, came in last week to check the positioning of the treatment
area. We talked briefly and as she was leaving, I thanked her. I heard her say as she exited from the treatment room; "You can thank me when the pain goes away."

Truer words were never spoken. Except of course the words I go to every morning, the words that I cling to...The Word:

"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed." 1Peter4:12-13