Journal

I marked this positive for my life is so much better now. But i also understand that while i was in pain, i tried to not lay it on those around me, so these private notes have never been shared. I am today rebuilding a life torn by 12 years of pain. It's still hard but I feel very blessed each and every single day. 

Journal from 9/24/98

Note: This is taken from a small notebook. My chronic pain started in August 1994 and ended in October 2006. This perspective begins after 4 years in pain. I was being treated with (an isufficient dose) pain meds at the time and had been for a year. The first 3 years were without any effective pain treatment.  These are excerpts for I can’t read it all.

“The Journey of the past four years has been brutal. Ever since the fateful fall and the rafting injury 1 ½ years later, some, no many of the aspects of my life have taken on a hellish level of difficulty. “

“I now know there is a population that lives through every second of the day coping with chronic pain. Often, even their closest supporters, in spite of witnessing and block out their obvious agony, believe they aren’t coping well enough. “

“I suffered enough that I know that I have developed powerful coping skills, unseen to others.”

“Anyway, during the past years I have found that, with medication, I can resume my life. The last years have seen us plunge into poverty, that all changed. Though not huge, the settlement gives us a chance to resume our economic life.”

9/28/98 – Today I had 4 vicodin, finally got the script filled, delayed as broke + Hurricane Georges. It’s great to have the pain relief above the cripple threshold”

Note: The journal is full of note about various methods I was trying to make an income. The pain really wrecked my efforts in many ways.

11-18-98 “Today is the first time in months that I have not taken meds first thing. It provides a reminder of how strong the pain underneath is.  It’s 9:57 and I just took 20mg oxycontin, 40-50 minutes until relief. It is very pervasive and oppressive of any activity, even simple ones like writing this.”

Note: Many of the pages I simply can’t read. Now that I’m not in pain like that, I write much better. Also, I apparently lost or didn’t look at this book for years. The next entries pick up in 2004.

4-5-2005 9:38am “Will I ever be able to sit up like normal people?:

Note: It shows references to organizations like Abilities, Inc. who never really did help, but shows that I was, in desperation, looking for help.

4-6-04 this entry shows many references to the VA, apparently trying to make some progress. It features sketches of my head, neck and arm, with marks for where the pain is and a list of symptoms. This was ten years after the beginning of the pain.

There’s lots more but I can’t write about it now.

Note: #7 turned out to be the key to finding relief. This symptom drew me to NeuroCranial Restructuring in October 2006 and I’ve not suffered pain at these levels at all, not once, in the 3 years since.  I still have #5 and i still have a little discomfort, but NeuroCranial Restructuring ENDED the DEBILITATING LEVEL OF PAIN in 3 friggen days. 

It's amazing to go through the experience of recovering your life after 12 years of severe constant pain. The last 3 years I've been getting better at a rate something like growing up 3 times faster than usual. It's incredible. At the end of the 12 years of pain I looked at the world like a 15 year old. All the adults were inimidating, knew more. I was inexperienced, like when I joined the navy at 19, i really felt little, then over the 4 years of my enlistment, I became like the people I was, at first, intimidated around. 

Well, 12 years of pain and brain injury symptoms made me feel like I was 15, unable to speak or participate in life around, feeling overwhelmed that everyone else was so much more 'with it'.  In 3 years, I've gone from 15 to 35, like 20 years of advancement I had before the pain. Tomorrow, my 53rd birthday, I'm playing my first solo gig, playing guitar and singing at a small beach pub near here. I couldn't have done this a year ago. My condition today still carries remnants of the damage of 12 years of pain and brain interference, but they are minute by comparsion to even last year and the year before that was worse and the year before that, i was still in the house-bound mode that 12 years of that condition, and the opioid medication that helped me survive it left me. 

No mistake, i wouldn't have survived without meds, but it would have been even nice to have had NCR 5 or 10 years earlier, then the decline simply would not have occurred. This is why i keep trying to tell people: If you're in pain from a condition NCR can help, i want to save you those horrible 2nd or 3rd 5 years. For me the last 5 years resulted in the highest amount of loss, a loss of so many things, that it will take me many years to recover from.