Pain can be the cause of some people going mad, and others becoming tolerant of pain.

What's the difference between walking on fire and warming your feet with a fire? — What’s the difference between walking on fire and warming your feet with a fire?

* When Pain is a Way of Life *

Ever been poked in the bum with a sharp stick, to make you do something you didn’t want to do? No, me neither. No need to poke me to make me climb a tree to pick an apple for my wife… except I have no head for heights and no climbing skills.

But, as always, I digress. This blog piece is actually about pain. Yes, that pain in the bum from a sharp stick, or the pain you feel when you stub your toe. It’s pains like that we all feel every day of the week. The pain comes and soon goes. But how would you cope with constant pain? Not so much how we got the pain, but how we deal with it when your foot, leg, hand or whatever suddenly screams in pain.

Shylock said, in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Yes, we do bleed, I know that very well because being a diabetic I’m always pricking myself to test my blood sugar. And yes, there is pain involved. But you know what, I don’t feel the pain anymore.

In most situations, feeling pain doesn’t bother me these days. From about five years ago when I broke seven ribs in a fall down a small cliff onto rocks below I’ve slowly built up an indifference to pain. Or is it indifference? Who knows..

I know, sounds very brave and dramatic. It’s neither of those things, just a way for me to have gained a way to deal with pain. When I was diagnosed with cancer, the last thing on my mind was pain. But cancer has a way of giving us all a wake-up call… and usually it’s not pain free.

Where you have cancer in your blood or bones, you’re going to need at least one aspiration procedure. That’s where the doctor drills (very slowly) into a bone (mine was the thigh bone) in order to extract bone marrow fluid. It’s painful, very painful. I’ve had it three times and I’m not keen to have it again. But I went through with it without crying out or cursing because of the pain.

Grit your teeth and get on with it.

The same applied to the pain caused by the chemotherapy for my lymphoma – blood cancer to you and me. The chemo attacks the white blood cells with cancer, killing them off. It also attacks white blood cells that are healthy and also attacks lots of other stuff in a body. In my case, my bones were so painful I could have screamed the house down. But, until the oncologist put me on painkillers, I had to find my own solution. The only way I could relieve the pain was with a very hot bath. I suppose you could call it aversion therapy. Once I was put onto pain killers, it was fine. Until the neuropathy started. And that was a real I can’t get to sleep all night sort of pain. More painkillers and it finally phased the pain out. But, I had no intention of spending my life on painkillers like Pregabalin and Tramadol. So, I came off the painkillers and learned to live with the pain. It’s not regular, at worst a few times a week and at best once a week. But you learn to live with the pain.

It got to a point that I recently got toothache. Another possible side effect with my chemo was some of my teeth literally rotted away and collapsed. Dental pain is pretty bad, but, it didn’t bother me and has faded away now. No doubt it will come back when I get to see my dentist soon.

It seems that what’s happened to my body over the years, is maybe not a resistance to pain, but a tolerance to it, higher than any normal type of tolerance. After a while, you can tend to believe you’re Superman. That is, until some new pain introduces itself to you.

Yes, that’s me as Indie-Author Man… no, not working is it?

Yesterday, I had laser eye treatment because I have bleeds in both eyes and being I diabetic it’s important to control bleeds in the eyes. A bleed in the eye may need laser treatment to seal the bleed or, for panretinal photocoagulation (PRP), it is often used to prevent or slow down the growth of new abnormal blood vessels, thus reducing the risk of vision loss. I’ve had laser eye treatment before, without any pain. But I’ve never had it to seal a bleed. So, perhaps stupidly, I was expecting no pain because my previous experience gave me no pain. How wrong I was. It was painful and very invasive in an odd sort of way. There was no incision, just a blinding white light (so the opthamologist could see the bleed) and a series of bursts with the laser, slowly getting more and more painful.

Oh, and here’s a top-tip to avoid pain. By all means, let your wife poke you with a stick, or better still, offer to climb the tree and get the apple, without a poke from a stick. But under no circumstances let her poke you in the eye after laser surgery. I just inadvertently did that to myself and believe me, it’s bloody painful!

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