Whoever said that pain is temporary....

....didn't tell the whole story.

Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor, famously said, "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." Sure Lance, you are right, pain does not have residence in every moment of our lives, it increases and decreases in severity, and in the most precious of moments, it does not exist at all. If only it was pain itself that was the most unnerving, but it is not. Pain is bearable; it is the indefiniteness of pain that is unsettling. Not knowing when this unpleasant feeling is going to leave you is utterly demoralizing. And on the rare occasions that you are without pain, you cannot enjoy it, because you are too fearful of how long you have until the pain is back. For all of us who are chronically living with pain, we know it is a vicious cycle, dominated by the existence and non-existence of sheer agony.

Personally, I find that a lot of my friends and family try to understand what I am going through; they try to know what my life is like. I would never wish for anyone to be able to know what I experience; for one to know chronic pain and illness, they must experience it personally, and there is no individual I would have suffer that kind of existence. It is a lonely battle that I fight daily. Pain is indescribable. It is a feeling, with an individual capacity that no two people share. My pain will never be the same as your pain and the scale by which it is measured is relative. Pain is an experience. It is motivating, not in the inspirational sense, rather, it causes us to avoid similar experiences in the future and protect ourselves from further damage. Pain is as much psychological as it is physical; it's intensity can, at times, be tempered by a pleasant diversion (be it an analgesic, a friend, a funny joke, a good movie, or a beautiful song). There are times when it is so strong that it modulates the experience of your life; for me, I have found that the times when I am in pain, I have trouble concentrating on any one thing or remembering what went on during that time. It is almost synonymous to someone "blacking out" after consuming a great deal of alcohol, and being unable to recall prior events. Yet I, without any drugs or alcohol at all, have the same loss of memory, without any help. For a while, I thought that I was becoming rather stupid, being unable to recall the most simple of thoughts; until I realized it's relation to my condition. One advantage is that I can watch a new movie recurrently and still feel as though I'm seeing it for the first time. Splendid! There are few advantages, but every moment that I feel pain, I know that I am still alive, and that is enough, because life is the greatest uncertainty. Keep living.

It's only a shadow, Peter Pan.

The stages of accepting the reality of having a chronic condition are quite childish in nature; like children, we hold dearly a time in our life that we never wish to leave behind. In the beloved literary fantasy Peter Pan, a shadow was much more than a dark spot on the ground; it had color, animation, texture, and shape. However, it is comparatively light and insubstantial to the human's shape it resembled, and ultimately it was just a semblance of the true being. Likewise, with the passage time, the chronically ill become a semblance of their former, "healthy" self. In Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie intimates that no ever fully grows up, rather, it is a process that continues through life. Similarly, no one ever fully welcomes a life ridden with disease; it is a condition we adapt to over time.

I have always been told never to compare myself to anyone else, which I don't, that wouldn't be fair. However, I am told to compare myself to who I was yesterday. Well, this used to be a great measurement of improvement, until the "me" of yesterday was continually stronger, better, faster, healthier, and more energetic than the "me" of today. It has been a rather discouraging reality, coming to terms with never being who I "once was." This was until I purchased a book at the Barnes and Noble in Oceanside, CA this summer [ Inside Chronic Pain ]. The author shares the same struggle of self-comparison. She had looked at it the same way I have; always striving to "get back" to being the "same" person we were pre-accident or pre-disease. Ms. Heshusius opened my eyes to a very transcendent notion: Instead of trying to be the same person I was before I was ill, why not be the best person I can be while sick. I have been waiting to "get better," "find a cure," or "get past this" until I realized this is not going away. *LIGHT BULB* The minute I comprehended that fact, I was relinquished the duty of trying to be the "sick-free" Morgan. Instead, now I can improve upon myself to be the best I can in spite of my condition. I am no longer the shadow of who I once was, but rather casting a new shadow from my ameliorated self.

Chron•ic: (adj) persisting for a long time or constantly recurring [of an illness]

It may be a tad strange that I title my first post with a definition, but in my experience, it is crucial (from the latin crux: the decisive or most important point at issue) that anyone enduring or trying to understand chronic illness, must fully acknowledge and comprehend the "chronic" part. Those of us who live with a chronic condition/illness/or/disease are aware that we do not have a flu or cold that we just need to "ride out;" we understand that whatever it is we may be battling will persist for a long time and/or constantly recur. What's a struggle for us, is trying get our friends and family to mentally grasp that we aren't necessarily going to "get better" or "be cured." There will be good days, which we are thankful for. There will be bad days, which we endure. And there will be awful days, which we survive.

We are running a marathon, not a sprint. Thus, the way we are cared for tends to be different than if you were to be helping out a friend with a bad hang over or the sniffles. When dealing with an extended period of sickness, we tend to value the companionship, more than the bowl of soup. We want to see the bearer of our prescriptions more than our need to take them. And anyone willing to stay by the side of one who is chronically ill, does not have an easy road ahead of them, but they are a ture blessing. A blessing that we, at times, feel unworthy of. More often than not, we cannot give back all that we are given, and that is a hard truth to live with. In some cases, we might isolate ourselves from others so we do not feel as though we are taking what we do not deserve. We know that we will be battling what ails us for the rest of our lives, but this concept can be hard for others to grasp. With the passage of time, our disease becomes our way of life - we just hope that there will be loved ones there to live it with.

My name is Morgan and I am chronically ill.