Part I
Analysis is my buddy. There’s nothing I like more than staring at a knotty “challenge” and thinking: “Hmmm...What if…?” People close to me (my husband, my adult children, my theatrical colleagues, my siblings, my library colleagues...) have been known to roll their eyes when I say those words, but really...things generally turn out alright.
Most challenges I face are of the artistic, educational or performance-based variety: “What stories can I choose for toddlers that will illuminate what “grateful” means?” “ How can our artistic team create a believable theatrical world with a set that has at least 9 different locations?” “What exercises can convince my troupe of teenage actors that less is more?” Sometimes I am working alone, and sometimes with a team but either way, it is in my nature to back up from a problem in order to look at it from as many angles as possible. Backing up gains me a larger perspective. Sometimes there is a pattern or an idea floating out there in the “What if” that fires my imagination. I can reshape a “problem” into exciting possibilities. And analysis that leads to possibilities? That’s magical, and more often than not leads to synergistic miracles.
This essay could also be called “How Chronic Pain Almost Broke Me” or “How Chronic Pain Can Mess Up Your Mind.” but I thought that readers might pass those by. And truly, it was only after many months, when I was finally coming out of the mental hidey-hole I’d been in that I could see the whole situation from that larger, wiser perspective. (See, I told you! Analysis is my buddy.)
I am finally coming out from that hidey-hole, and I am, of course, looking for answers. What happened? How did I gain 20 pounds in a month? What the actual hell happened that made me retreat into every bad habit that I’ve spent the last seven years dismantling? It was pathetically simple.
On October 10, 2018 my husband and I were leaving Mount Washington Hotel after a weekend-long convention. It was a gorgeous fall day, and we had decided to take a hike in the area-- we wanted to prolong the beautiful weekend. Pulling into one of the many side parking areas that live on that highway, we stopped and chose a longer loop from the trail map. Since I have cranky knees, I already had my walking poles in the front seat, preparing to use them to help me hike and muscle myself out of the car. I swung my legs out of the car and planted my poles... and felt a teeny “pop” between my shoulder blades; slightly to the right of my spine and what I would eventually come to know as near the C-5, C-6 and C-7 vertebrae. I shook it off, literally gave my shoulders a roll and a shimmy and thought, “Rats, I must have slept on the mattress funny”. I strapped on my fanny pack as I always do when we hike or bike outdoors, shared a quick drink of water with my husband, squatted to retie my laces and began a literal odyssey that continues to impact my life, even up to this moment.
That night before bed, after hiking, driving, stopping for dinner and driving some more; I went through a vigorous upper body stretching routine and took 3 or 4 advil. I hurt. My neck muscles on the right side were like marble. The top of my right shoulder was granite, and I felt a deep, aching pinch near or under my shoulder blade that made me want to have someone drive an elbow there, and just grind. (I’ve since found that golf balls do a decent job of getting into that spot.)
For the next 14 months, I got to know Pain. It scored a ragged line from my neck to my shoulder blade, wrapped under my armpit, and burned down the back side of my arm into my elbow, wrist and fingers. Muscles I didn’t know I had seized, spasmed and twitched. The knot under my right shoulder blade felt like an angry toddler given to mood swings and temper tantrums. Using my right hand or arm became impossible. Any activity would fire up the muscles, causing spasming and red-hot pain. Over those 14 months, I stopped crocheting, knitting, writing, drawing, painting, and making jewelry. I stopped walking because the motion of my arms would reactivate pain and muscle spasms. I stopped biking because holding up my head activated my neck and shoulders muscles, and that would reactivate pain and muscle spasms. I stopped hiking because bearing down on the walking poles I used (to assist with the cranky knee problem) put me out of commission for days at a time. Rehearsals for the musical I had recently been cast in were agony: I dropped out of the show a month before opening. At work, I switched my computer mouse to the left side and gritted my teeth through 50 emails a day. I could find relief only by holding my right arm over my head….so I did: through staff meetings, through my work day, and at night when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to sleep.
It was not as linear a process as it sounds. I was stubborn, and naive. In the beginning, I kept crocheting, rehearsing, knitting and biking. I thought that if I could just find the right stretch, the “kink” or “knot” would let go. I’d met pain before, and I’d subdued it. I’m 57 years old and there is wear and tear on this body of mine. I’ve birthed three children--two by c-section; had major surgery on my jaw, and had a lumbar spinal fusion after two years of degenerating discs and vertebrae. I had experienced “getting on top” of pain, I thought. I knew how to do it, and I would do it again.
But this pain had its own ideas. It had its own methods. It was relentless. It was merciless. It beat me down, and left me nauseated and gasping. It didn’t allow any errors. One slip, one untenable movement, and I would feel the full tide of its fury. It couldn’t be eased by a new position or a deeper breath; or by advil or tylenol or muscle relaxants; or by cortisone injections. It couldn’t be eased, period. It, not I, was in charge and I felt claustrophobic in my own body. The possibility that I might have to live the rest of my life with this horrible guardian began to seem very real, and it terrified me. At night, holding my arm over my head in bed, futilely trying another arrangement of pillows and weeping with tiredness, I would think: “Please, let me go.”
Part II
MRIs, the Pain Clinic, Gabapentin, tizanidine and me. Or, I come back to myself.
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