It’s Not My Back

How many times have people been well-meaning and said to me “I hope your back feels better” as some standard gesture acknowledging my pain but when they really don’t actually want to hear any more about it.

First of all, my pain’s not in my back. It’s in the parts I use to sit, and where I feel the most feminine. It’s where I gave birth. I understand people don’t want to say the V word. I don’t want to say it myself. And technically my pain is in the nerves within the muscle tissue in a few locations, so it’s not just about any one particular location anyway. I fractured my coccyx which is technically part of the back.

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Injection Reaction and Life Gets in the Way

It’s been over three months since the nerve block injections. A few days after I received them, The New York Times came out with a a feature about a study on how many redheads react to anesthetics. That would be me. Sigh. Luckily, thanks to this blog, I got in touch with someone else who had a similar reaction who told me it took about 3 months for it to wear off. She was right. It was a huge help having a timeline to focus on. Now I’m almost back to where I was before those awful shots.

Strength in Numbers

Over the past few weeks since I’ve begun sharing my story of chronic pain on this blog, via its companion Twitter feed, through Facebook and just in general, I’ve learned two things: 1) I’m not alone – not by a long shot, and 2) by sharing, I’m helping others to bring out what they’re going through as well. During this short time, several friends have come to me with their own stories of pain, and four have started blogging about it.

I’m engulfed by sadness for those who toil daily with similar agonies, but I’m also overwhelmed with a positive feeling that by communicating about what we’re going through, perhaps we can help each other heal and help reduce the general stigma that surrounds people who live in pain. John F. Kennedy, one of the most revered leaders in modern history, suffered in severe chronic pain for years, yet he had to cover it up in order for the public to have confidence in his presidency. We can all gather strength from each other and our experiences.

My First Mommy Blog

It seems a bit silly that after blogging for 7 years and starting over a dozen blogs that this is my first official mommy blog, but so it goes…

Now that I’ve gotten going with this blog, I just want all of my mom blogger friends to know I do want to link to you – I just don’t have all of your site URLs with me while traveling, and the computer I’m on is difficult to use to research these things.

So if you want to help me out by adding your blogs in the comments here, I’ll add them to the blogroll as soon as I get a chance.  There’s not much there now, but I expect it to be a valuable resource once it’s completed.

And please… if you’re willing, put up a link to this blog somewhere. It’s important to raise awareness about chronic pain, pelvic pain, and what it’s like to be a mom in pain.  We have a long way to go before there’s true job flexibility and equity for people who are disabled for whatever reason, and pain counts there as well.