According to Comprehensive Pain Specialists, “back pain not only affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined but workers lose an average of 4.6 hours per week of productive time due to pain and 20 percentage of Americans pain disrupts their sleep a few nights a week or more and 80 percent of people in the United States will experience back pain at some point in their lives. Besides the common cold, back pain is the number one reason people visit their family doctors.”
The bottom line is that we can’t get through this life without a little pain but that doesn’t diminish the pain that I have experienced for the past few years. Anyone who has suffered back pain can identify with the misery that goes with not getting a good nights sleep. Back pain — I could write the book about it, working through several bouts every day!
Not only has back pain become more intense, interrupting my quality of life for the past five years, though it has taken all the grit, raw courage and determination as I struggle to write the stories that are so much a part of who I am!
I feel I have a mission to leave a legacy for my family and for those who might appreciate my slant on life. Maybe my words will help you.
Anyone who thinks that pain is just in the head needs to think again — although I do believe that Bill Moyers, best selling author of Healing and the Mind, was right in teaching that there is a strong connection between the mind and the body!
Ever since 1976 when we lived in Cleveland, Arkansas, where our youngest son, Jeremy, was five months old, I experienced my first bout of back pain, which lasted about a week, I learned that I could only find relief by lying flat on my back on the floor — often on a heating pad and accompanied by muscle relaxers. Also pulling my legs high up on the wall helps.
Since then I’ve discovered other exercises that offer relief.
I always thank God when I awake without any pain even though my relief may be temporary and I regain my joy.
Almost everyone I talk to about my back pain knows exactly what I am talking about!
After numerous tests and x-rays and an MRI the conclusion was reached that surgery really isn’t an option. I don’t really want surgery but I would like a quick fix that would get me on the road to recovery!
After visits with my beloved primary physician and a spine specialist in Shreveport, I think I have made my decision to learn to cope with my pain the best I can. These doctors helped me to see that the only long-term relief is for me to resume my exercise program though I am a bit on the lazy side when it comes to exercise — but now I am back to walking and my pain sometimes seems more manageable but I just wonder could my pain be psychosomatic?
Just to have a few hours of life without pain makes me euphoric! Just to know that others have experienced our kind of pain – whether physical or emotional gives us strength to go on which leads me to my bottom line!
I believe it takes experiencing deep pain to help us grow – to become who we were meant to be – so that we can reach out and lend support to those who need it most and it’s when we drop our barriers ad allow others into our private world that we are joined together as one large family.
After all by sharing our physical and emotional pain “we are angels flying with only one arm and we can only fly embracing each other.”
Sarah Hudson Pierce is an author who lives near Mooringsport, Louisiana
