Perception

I had therapy today.  I’m supposed to increase my PTSD med.  Apparently I’m not doing well.

But, I was supposed to increase it on my own a week ago.  I was supposed to increase it by 1 mg every week for four weeks unless I felt I was doing fine at a certain dosage, then I could elect to hold at that dosage level.

I thought I was doing fine at 1 mg.  I haven’t had nightmares, I haven’t had flashbacks, particularly, here and there, but nothing like after the biopsy.  So… that’s what the PTSD drug is supposed to do… eliminate nightmares and flashbacks.  So I didn’t increase it.

I also don’t take my asthma medication because I don’t have crippling asthma attacks that put me in the hospital.

And I haven’t been taking my pain medication because… the pain isn’t debilitating.  I can do chores and drive and… function… so the fact that I’m still having almost constant pain is… not relevant.

And, today, I told my therapist that the third time I was raped was “the easy rape.”  I actually rendered her speechless for a moment, and then she was quite strident in telling me that those words do not belong together, there is no such thing, and… apparently it is appalling that I would refer to being raped as “easy.”  But… compared to the other two… the last one was… the least awful?  So I was annoyed that having to get a mammogram and a clinical breast exam is bringing up memories from that rape.

So…  apparently…  I’ve been so badly abused in my life that I have a… high tolerance for suffering.  And this, apparently, makes it harder for my doctors to treat me.

I, on the other hand, perceive myself as a big baby who just makes everything a big deal when it really isn’t a big deal, and I’m overly sensitive and complain too much.

A few weeks ago, I got the flu.  The real, killed-half-of-Europe, influenza flu.  My cough was really bad, and I felt like I had a fever, so I went into the Urgent Care.  The ER doctor talked to me for five minutes and said she thought I was an under-reporter, a “tough” patient and she wanted to run an EKG, in addition to a chest x-ray, whooping cough test, and an IV and two breathing treatments.

They were also concerned that I was coughing so hard I would break ribs and wanted to transfer me to a real ER as soon as possible (my resting heart rate was 120, spiking to 190 during coughing fits, and my blood pressure was going from 160/120 to 190/150 when I coughed) because they were afraid I’d have a stroke…  from coughing.

It was… surreal.  I didn’t FEEL that sick.  Alarms were going off on all of my monitors and nurses were literally running into my room every few minutes… but… I didn’t FEEL that sick.  I just watched all of this hive of activity around me with a sense of unreality.

And this doctor, talking to me for five minutes, decided I had too high a pain tolerance to be trusted to self-report.  (I said my pain was about a 2, going up to about a 7 when I coughed.)

But… I’m a big baby.

I’m a hypochondriac.

I just do it all for attention.

Right?

DJ has more than once sat me down and straight up told me that I’m wrong.  That I am seriously sick.  That I have very real physical and psychological issues that I need to honor by paying attention to them and caring for them appropriately.

My therapist sat me down today and straight up told me that I cannot heal, or even treat my illnesses if I can’t connect to my body and my emotional states and honor what is happening.

My OCD was so bad on Saturday night I actually had to sit down on the sidewalk and hold R-dog in a strangle hug (poor R-dog actually put up with it), because my brain wouldn’t stop replaying him getting into traffic and dying.

But, then I tell my therapist (and I really think this) that I’m doing really pretty well, considering.  I expected to be doing so much worse after the surgery… I’ve not had many flashbacks and I’m sleeping pretty well… no nightmares.  So…  Really.  This is as good as it gets, right?

I think that’s it.  I think it’s not entirely that I don’t notice that I’m suffering.  It’s that… I don’t expect there to be any solution.  I expect that… this is as good as it gets.  Always.

I remember when I was a kid… I was in pain a lot.  I had a lot of injuries, a lot of which I hid from my parents… or I would overplay some other minor thing so much that they thought I was exaggerating so that they wouldn’t notice what was really happening.

After I was raped when I was 15, it was difficult to walk, or sit.  I claimed that I had “broken my foot” and walked with a terribly exaggerated limp for weeks.  I even wrapped my foot and ankle in an ACE bandage for a while.  I also claimed to have thrown out my back, “probably a slipped disk!” and played that for all it was worth.

I clearly had neither broken my foot nor slipped a disk in my back.  So my parents assumed I was just exaggerating (again) and didn’t look further.  My dad gave me multiple lectures about crying wolf and people thinking badly of me for “being a baby” about “minor aches and pains.”  Same story all my life.

But hey.  Nobody found out I’d been raped and ripped open so badly I couldn’t eat solid food for a month.

Right?

When a teacher threw me into a wall in third grade and I broke my wrist, I went home and wrapped my entire arm in ACE bandages and gauze and medical tape.  My dad rolled his eyes and gave me a lecture about being dramatic.  But my arm was so covered in bandages, neither of my parents could see how swollen it was, or that my entire had had turned purple/black.  I rigged myself a “sling” with a dish towel and wore it and the bandages for weeks.  (I was committed, my parents had to give me credit for that!)

I would get shin splints (that was the best explanation the doctors had) when I was young.  It was this aching pain that radiated out from my shins, into my thighs, and then into my belly and lower back.  The pain was so bad, I would get nauseous.  I remember once, sitting in a restaurant, just panting and hunched over in my chair, not touching my food (unusual for me, eating at a restaurant was a big deal as a kid).  I remember just trying to survive the pain… barely aware of anything else around me.  But I remember my mom saying that she was concerned that she thought I was “really hurting.”  And I remember my dad saying, “She’s not even crying.  It can’t be that bad.”

I used to make deals with God (we weren’t Christian, so my understanding of God was… some man in the sky who grants wishes if you’re good… kinda like Santa Claus).  I would wait until my pain was at a relative low point and I’d ask God to just freeze it there… and in exchange I’d… keep my room clean… get along with my brother… listen to my mom…  I never thought to ask for no pain… just… just to keep it at a manageable level.  That’s what I asked God for as a kid.

My therapist says… that’s not good, anymore.

She says it’s important to tell people when I’m hurting.  To acknowledge it to myself.  To have a realistic view of how things are going.  To develop the ability to self-care when things are not at an absolute, unbearable crisis.

I’m having a hard time with that.

If things aren’t unbearable… why worry about it?  Why not just hope to freeze the lull… when things are… less bad than awful.

To actually not be in pain would be… I don’t even know.  I don’t know what that would be.

Life is pain.

Right?