After a Fall, Pain Is Both Her Constant Companion and Her Jailer

Two years and a few months ago, I lost control of my life.

Pain took over.

Now it regulates nearly every moment of my waking life, holding me captive to its savage dictates.

Twice a night, too, it comes to visit, sometimes just to say hello and remind me it is still around, other times to visit for a long chat.

Pain makes me irritable, it makes me cry. It sends me into fits of rage and sloughs of despair.

My pain stems from a neck injury suffered in a fall that ironically was caused by a medication that dumped my blood pressure and sent me into a semiconvulsion in my kitchen. I woke up choking on my blood, not sure how long I had been unconscious, whether it was all blood pressure or whether the bonks on Formica contributed.

The immediate damage was quickly assessed. I had knocked out my two front teeth. Although my neck and shoulders ached, it seemed like the kind of pain that I, as a weekend warrior athlete, would normally get when I played tennis or softball.

But these aches did not heal. They went from aching to the feeling that a woodpecker was perched on my right shoulder constantly pecking at a knot in the right side of my neck. Then the pain started shooting up and down the spine. Then the muscle spasms took over. One night I lost most of the power in my right side temporarily. I started falling on the street, my right leg just losing it.

I have consulted more than a dozen physicians, mostly specialists, as well as non-traditional healers, two acupuncturists, one acupressurist, even a pain hypnotist. He decreed that I was among the 20% of the population that is not hypnotizable.

The consensus is that I have crossed over into what they call Chronic Pain Syndrome.

I don’t want to hear that.

I want it fixed, dammit.

If they can operate on fetal hearts, sew back fingers severed by subway cars, perform open heart surgery as routinely as appendectomies, why, oh why, can’t they fix a neck that simply took a heavy bang?

Pain has changed my life, narrowing it as old age will eventually do. But, at 49, I’m not old enough to be this old. I feel like in the last two years I have aged 30.

I no longer drive. It is too painful and potentially hazardous. I’ve let my license expire.

I’ve been to one Broadway show and one movie since the accident. It is too painful to sit in a seat for two hours, especially at night when I have been up part of the day. Ditto for museums, art galleries, concerts and all the other reasons one chooses to live in New York City.

I cannot read for long periods at a time.

Doing dishes is a killer, but a necessity. Ironing is out. I don’t wear anything that needs to be ironed.

I rarely wear my contact lenses anymore. The neck movement to put them in and take them out is a painful one.

I’ve not bought any clothes since the Nov. 13, 1987, fall. It’s too painful to try them on.

I tried shopping once, but the pain became overpowering and I raced home, to a Manhattan apartment that has now become my workplace most of the time. It seems silly. I live 20 blocks from my office, but it costs too much in pain to go in to the office every day. It is more productive and less painful, but lonely and isolated, to work from home. With today’s computer technology, it’s possible.

It’s the little things that defeat my spirit. Routine tasks have become mine fields waiting to explode the pain. Pulling on pantyhose and boots? Could be the worst mistake of the day. Brushing my teeth? It always hurts. Why washing my hair, under a hot shower, hurts, is the biggest mystery. That should feel good, but it doesn’t.

I see movies now on my VCR. I’ve also learned that people, even close friends, just are incapable of understanding something as foreign as this kind of captivity. They constantly ask if I’ve seen the latest movie--or eagerly recommend one.

I have explained for a million times that I don’t go to movies. They ask, incredulously, for the millionth time, how could sitting in a movie bother me?

What do you say? Nothing. Eventually, you don’t explain.

Yes, I could go to a movie if that was the only plan of the day. It’s just that too many other things take priority. Working, fixing food, getting dressed, running errands, going to the supermarket, writing checks, dumping garbage.

Before the fall, I usually took care of household chores in a white tornado fashion, food shopping, laundry and apartment cleaning all in one day, usually finishing by 3 p.m.

I usually went out four or five times a week, either to a play, a movie, dinner at someone’s home or a restaurant, nothing dramatic. I frequently was a weekend guest at country homes of friends. I sailed. I often walked 2 miles to work, through Central Park.

Now, I’m mostly an isolated homebody. I’m lucky I have a single friend left. I have canceled more appointments than I’ve kept.

My pain has caused me to budget my activities, the way a person existing on a limited fixed income shops. My “income” is the ability to stand or sit up straight, to do anything that requires flexion, the ability to look down, to concentrate without the overwhelming distraction of pain.

In short, to function.

I manage my pennies of energy carefully. Going out at night is a lavish expenditure.

New companions, in addition to the cervical collar, are the moist heating pad; the old sock with three tennis balls inside, the better to get the heat on the spot where the pain likes to sear; jars and jars of Mineral Ice, a remedy that works something like putting medication on a tooth that really needs dental attention. Its help is short-lived, but I’ll take it.

I’ve learned a lot of tricks, some vetoed by the doctors. One is to drive the back of my head into the living room carpet with all my might. It seems to get something off of something. Trouble is, the sophisticated tests don’t show anything on anything. I’m betting on my body, not technology. The other is to hunker down, put all my weight on the balls of my feet and stretch out the whole spine. That helps too--for no apparent medical reason.

I have learned a lot about pain.

One: It can drive you crazy, even in small amounts, by its constancy.

Two: It can drive you to question your sanity when it lifts. When pain is gone, for some mysterious reason, so is the memory of it. You immediately begin thinking you made it all up. Or, more ominously, that it’s not coming back. I still fall for that. I guess it’s a tribute to the elasticity of the human spirit. It’s also pretty stupid.

Three: It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. Distraction therapy works temporarily. While it may be good for the psyche, pain will get the last laugh. You pay the piper if you push the body beyond where it is ready to go. It is better to cooperate. When it says this is going to be a bad day, believe it. Rest it. The next day will be better.

Four: Pain is tiring.

Five: Pain is not one entity. It is an orchestra, sometimes featuring a soloist, sometimes many instruments. My worst pain is the searing pain right along the right side of the vertebrae. It can be razor sharp with each step digging in.

There is the shooting pain down my right arm, often causing ersatz numbness in my fingers. It’s not total numbness. It’s more like the sensation you have when the novocaine is wearing off. You feel something, but not everything.

There is the stab of the muscle spasms, the ache of soreness, sometimes dull, sometimes acute, always persistent.

Twice a week I go to physical therapy where I am tractioned, ultrasounded, electronically stimulated. I spend a few minutes every hour exercising. I am surely by now a contender for a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most shoulder rolls completed.

I will not share all the advice I’ve been given. You can imagine it. One I must. A New Ager among my acquaintances told me this unmitigating pain was a wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth. Fortunately, she was on the other end of the telephone, out of range of my rage.

The one piece of advice I will never take is that I must quit fighting, that I must accept the pain.

I will never give up. I will get rid of it.