That's a nice thought, but what about 37 years of severe T compounded with 20-some-odd years of mind-bending severe chronic pain and a grinding, pounding, soul-crushing major depressive disorder? Enjoy your able body and earthly heaven because those can disappear without warning and fear can become the least of your worries faster than you can imagine...
I am thankful to have my wife and son on whom to focus when I can't stand for more than a couple minutes before the pain in my back and legs drives me to the floor in tears, with my arms and hands searing and burning, and all I can hear is the screaming in my ears... and the more I try not to listen the louder it gets and the more it draws in all my attention... Even so, when those times come along, repeating over and over and over all day, that's when I start dipping deeper and deeper and deeper down into the deep, deep, dark, dark, pit of depression and despair... swirling round and round... deeper and darker... that's when, under the screaming in my head, I hear the familiar refrain from an old Roger Miller song repeating over and over and over...
"One dyin' and a-buryin'...
One dyin' and a-buryin'...
Some cryin'...
Six carryin' me...
I wanna be free..."
Truly, I hope you never have to experience that depth of pain and sorrow in your life... I dearly wish I never had and that I never will again... although I know that's dead center on my horizon... probably today... most likely tomorrow... and all the days that follow... But please, don't tell me, or anyone else, that their life is "not worth worrying about" when you have absolutely NO F#@&ING CLUE what it's like to live a life like that about which you speak. As I wrote in a Facebook post that became the beginning of my blog:
...If there is one thing I would like readers to take away from this… well… this whateverthehell this thing is or has become, it is how extensive an impact Chronic Pain has on the life of the Chronic Pain patient…
It may sound trite or cliché, but unless you've experienced severe, chronic pain yourself, you can't understand the effect it has on every aspect of your life. Nor can the actual physical reality of the pain be adequately conveyed. Then there's also the extreme deep, dark, Depression that comes along with the Pain, which also cannot be adequately described to the uninitiated.
Caught between the two of them, the Pain and the Depression, life can become simply dark, horrific stretches of unbelievable pain and sadness, seeking relief by any available means. Thoughts of suicide transform from intermittent, frightening flights of imagination into nearly constant wishful thinking...
Unless you have been driven to the point of suicidal thoughts and/or actions yourself, you have no idea what that experience is like nor what it can do to you mentally, physically, spiritually or on any other level... For me personally, without going into too much detail, I entered college as a pre-seminarian intent on becoming an ordained minister... Fast-forward thru a number of horrific life experiences and far too much time later, and the only reason I don't officially call myself an atheist is that my mother is still alive... You never know for sure where or how you'll end up after Life chews you up and spits you out... noone else does either so, please, tread lightly should you feel the need to comment on someone else's situation or choices.
Peace,
Dave
Peace to you too
@David Young. Sorry that my post has caused you such rant and grief. I am not putting down your sufferings at all. I am here to help others so if my message hasn't helped you but angered you, I apologize. I hope you don't put down my 'history' of sufferings too. I am a grandfather now. So I have a long history and I know what sufferings are. As you say, you have no idea what others have gone through in life. I hope you also don't rule out what I have suffered in my life. I am some one who had been terrorized in a childhood incident which totally wrecked my young nerves. I had been crying for over a year at about 8 years old with tremendous mental stress for a young child with no help from others. The psychological strain later became an illness. I have since become a victim of life long anxiety and panic disorders. For a long time, panic attacks knocked me down so hard I was home bound as a young man. Many people don't know what it is like to be overcome by overwhelming mental attacks & sufferings. They may come involuntarily and can totally incapacitate you and you are reduced to like a child, totally helpless, sleepless, fearful of everything? It is not just mental sufferings. Anxiety and panic disorders have over 100 terrible symptoms and I had lots of those. They are psycho-somatic in nature which include pains. I remembered my mom had to rub my back and massage me nightly, singing lullaby to her 24 years old son to put him to sleep, wondering whatever demons have robbed him of his life and vigor. Those were years of tears and daily sufferings.
I am also someone who has lost a love one dear to me - my only son (have 3 other daughters), at 5 years old due to a freak accident and a piece of broken window glass pierced his heart. I was the most miserable father, there holding my lovely boy witnessing him died in my arms bloodied all over, seeing his face turning blue due to massive loss of blood and I was helpless to save him. If there is Hell on earth, that day of infamy with that bloody image imprinted on my brain forever is it. No father has to go through such hell. As if my prior history of anxiety and panic disorders not enough to hurt me, I then suffered PTSD for that tragic incident and had to be hospitalized and received psychiatric treatment & counselling for over a year. Every night when I closed my eyes, that 'hell' of an image appeared. How do you sleep with that? How do you remain sane? Every time I saw anything red, that bloody scene appears in the mind, even up to now and I am past 60. How do you cope with such thing for life? If I hadn't learned positivity, my sufferings would continue and I might have blown my head off.
Physical pain? I have my fair share with it, chronic ones too. I am someone with chronic back pain, diabetic nerve pain, and stiff sore muscles and joints. I am not comparing my pain with yours of course. Yours must be hell for you to be so upset about it. When I suffered the 1st back pain, I had to be hospitalized and it was so painful I couldn't get up for 4 days. The next attack I couldn't get up for 12 days with excruciating pain. This back pain has been with me since on varying degree of discomfort. I can't sit nor stand long, and I can't lift anything more than 30lb without feeling it. That is why I usually go fishing with some younger muscular guys for the mighty king salmon, knowing that I may need their help to carry it from the salmon river back to my car when I catch a monster. LOL. I couldn't hold my grand-kids in my arms for long too. The last time I tried on a 1 year old, I ended up having severely bad pain for a week. Gosh!
Then I have this diabetic nerve pain in my feet. Besides pain, it is also a most uncomfortable burning sensation. I couldn't even wear socks or even pants for long. The skin doesn't like anything touching it. Everyday when I work and sitting long, pain and burning sensation own me. I have to use wet towel to ease the burning feeling. There is no cure for that. To help myself deal with chronic pain and chronic burning sensation, plus my new found misery with ultra high pitch dog whistle T + severe hyperacusis, I searched the Internet for some help and thanks God I found Darlene Cohen, a pain guru & zen teacher. She didn't become a pain guru by knowledge, but by actually experiencing a life long of chronic pain. She had chronic and acute pain so bad that she was bed-ridden for a long time initially. When it first hit her in her young 20s, she couldn't even move as the pain was too much. She had to be cared for by others. Yet bless her, she and her positivity & mindfulness has helped her through her life until she passed away near 70 a few years ago. To her credit she even became a pain guru of sort, teaching pain management for severely chronic pain victims. She held chronic pain seminar to coach people how to deal with chronic pain. Her motto 'Finding Joy Amid the Pain' is now my new motto in life. You can google her as she has done many seminars and had writings on how to cope with chronic pain. Many people benefit from meeting and learning from her. Here is a good one in case you are interested in her story:
http://chriskresser.com/tribute-to-darlene-cohen-finding-joy-in-the-heart-of-pain/
I am also someone with chronic sleep apnea as well as chronic sinus pain/congestion. These two don't like each other. Sleep apnea causes me to stop breathing during sleep causing oxygen deprivation and daily struggle with fatigue and drowsiness. CPAP machine helps by pressurizing air into my breathing airway, but my chronic sinus congestion blocks my nostrils. So I end up breathing through my mouth using a full face mask the whole night. I often wake up multiple times during the night due to the mouth & airways becoming so dried up by the pressurized air, and it is a very tough sensation, as if those delicate linings of the mouth & throat are about to crack due to extreme dryness. Worst, these waking up moments are also when the ultra high pitch dog whistle screaming off the chart due to the oxygen deprived brain. Then you add the piercingly hurtful hyperacusis on top of that and you have a real bad sensation. T & H are two opposing monsters. H turns all normal sounds into hurtful piercing sensation. So I wore ear plugs trying to stop the hurt. But the plugs blocks all outside masking sounds, making the ultra high pitch loud T so unbearably dominant. I tried to choose the lesser evil but there is no lesser choice between them.
T & H also triggered relentless anxiety and panic attacks on auto mode the minute I woke up with T blasting away. Because of my prior condition of life long anxiety and panic disorders, I couldn't stop these attacks on will power alone. I had to depend on benzos, ADs and sleeping pills. Daily all the terrible sensations of T & H plus those horrible symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks just turned me into a mess. Then you add the discomfort of the other chronic conditions, you have a 'hell' of a life to endure daily. For how long? Gosh! Each day was a long dark day of immense sufferings. Of course, the big 'Suicide' word was dangling in front of this tired and stressed out mind, as it saw no way out of the long dark tunnel. If I had no family and not a Christian, who know if I am still here trying to help others. So I know what unbearable suffering is.
But Darlene Cohen taught me 'finding joy amid the pain', and now I add to it 'living life abundantly and positively to bury T & whatever to compensate for the suffering. What else can we do? Trying to be positive in the NOW is the best I can do to minimize the suffering. Finding a cure is beyond my control. Making a decision to focus on the positives and trying to turn each NOW moment into a positive moment is up to us. If Zoe Cartwright with deafness and loud unmaskable T, & Melody Gardot with severe T & H and a near fatal car accident (with incredible pain to the body) can overcome their tough struggles with a positive attitude and excel in life, I know I have a good chance by emulating their positivity and adaptability. If you are interested in their stories, you can read up this as I post about them in my success story. All the best to you and God bless.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/from-darkness-to-light-how-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/
Member
