PainCornerStore: All Things Kids

Remembering and including all members of your immediate family is a crucial component of my multimodal chronic pain toleration system.  How does that work?  Well, your family, your immediate family especially, is affected in a most dramatic and unsettling way when you become a chronic pain sufferer.  The changes that you go through affect them.  The events that you can't attend, the memories that you forget, the times you aren't at the dinner table or can't drive them to school or pick them up after school.  All of those things affect them.  They see you.  They see how the pain can change you and at times how the pain shows on your face as you lay on your bed or wherever you can lay, writhing in obvious pain.  They see it and they feel it emotionally.  Because they love you, the hurt when you hurt.

I know that at times I was very guilty of not realizing that my chronic pain was their chronic pain too.  I thought I was the only one suffering until I stopped to really look at the situation.  No, they don't physically feel the burning, stabbing, pulling, pinching pain but they feel the tug at their heart strings because they can't help you feel better.  They want to take your pain away so they can have their dad, husband, brother or whatever role you play, back in their lives like you were before the chronic pain changed things.  You try hard to be like you were but let's face it, when you are suffering from chronic pain, you are changed even if it's just in a small way, you are changed.  Depression is the first culprit that sneaks into your life.  Denial follows very shortly thereafter.  Then you have frustration, aggravation, anger, disbelief, confusion and a myriad of other emotions that flood through your life at random and continuously.  With all of that going on, you can't help but be changed.