Pain as Information

My health is not so good. And really, my health has been not so good for awhile now. A long while.

Most people would get the proper health services they needed, if they were insured or independently weathly. Since I've only been insured as an adult once, and I'm definitely not rich, I have learned how to do without health care. I've learned how it is to gimp along and call it functioning. My pain tolerance is high, and my ability to suffer while calling it strength has got to be off the charts.

For two of the last three deadline days at the paper, I have been inside the spell of a migraine. Through some effort of my will, I have managed to seem normal while inside I am falling apart. I'm afraid that if someone finds out I'm not well, and worse yet, that I get migraines, that they will immediately write me off as unreliable and flaky. You have to admit, lots of people who claim migraines are really just experiencing what we generally call a headache and looking for a way to call off work. Migraines are different. And I am familiar enough with them to say that when I am experiencing a migraine at its peak strength, I am a whimpering, crying mess who clings to her blanky in the dark. It is impossible for me to work when it's at that level because of the nausea, light and noise sensitivity that accompany it, that and the pain is so intense that not even I can fake alright-ness.

But on a pain scale of one to ten, I can function at a seven, if need be. Not at my full capacity, but I can work. And as long as the day may be and as stressful as I may get, no one knows unless I tell them, "I'm fighting a migraine." Which I will not do unless I have to leave because it's just become too much.

I have decided that I don't want to just suck it up anymore and pretend I'm not hurting when I am, and in a way that people who don't get migraines cannot understand. I used to see it as strength to do this, marshal onward in the face of misery and pain, and now I see it as a way my self-hatred manifests itself in disguise. The ER doc (who was so very kind -- a father of one of the kids I used to teach) recommended I get an MRI after my follow-up visit with him, and I reasoned that I couldn't afford the damn follow-up visit and definitely not an MRI so I would just do my normal thing and ignore it, hoping that whatever caused it was just some fluke.

But I can't hate myself like that anymore, no matter how much it's going to cost and how much more debt I will incur by seeing the doc again and getting an MRI.

I have to tell myself that I'm worth whatever it costs and that life doesn't have to be spent in pain and fear. I'm so used to living in the shadow of pain that my self-hatred did not become clear to me for what it was until I was sobbing in bed yesterday morning because I just couldn't force myself to go through another day in sustained agony.

And that, I tell myself, is progress. As horrible as it is to look at, that reflection staring at me during my dreams is my own practiced self-loathing. Only I can do something about it. I am taking the first step tomorrow.