White Sage

It’s time to do a spiritual cleansing. This won’t only consist of smudging my home, but my personal being as well. A re balance of my life force. The great spirit.

White Sage- Image credit- Hoodwitch

As a sensitive, Empath, I become overwhelmed by other peoples energy, pain, thoughts, emotions, even joy. This isn’t anything new. I’ve had the gift, curse? All my life. When I’m around positiveness that flame grows into peace, tranquility and calm, energizes me and all the others I come into contact with even when people are experiencing their own pain and hardships. There’s an opposite side to this. My negative energy doesn’t do anyone around me any good either.

“A strong life force makes a human being totally alive, alert and present while a weak force results in sluggishness and fatigue. … The concept of a life force is found in most of the ancient cultures of the world. In India, it is called prana; in China, chi; in Japan, ki; for Native Americans, the Great Spirit.”

http://www.energyarts.com/what-is-chi

In reference to a previous blog when I said I can’t choose one side or another. How could I authentically when one side doesn’t exist over the other? When everything is entangled? When it’s all connected?

MTP (Moving Toward Peace)
https://www.movingtowardspeace.com/mtpblog/the-ancient-art-of-burning-sage.html

Why Smudging Your Body With White Sage Is A Must For Every Highly Sensitive Warrior (A Guide To Smudging)
http://alcantaraacupuncture.com/why-smudging-your-body-with-white-sage-is-a-must-for-every-highly-sensitive-warrior/

White Sage Uses… A Step by Step Guide to Smudging
http://www.ask-angels.com/spiritual-guidance/white-sage-smudging/

White sage is also an herb and it’s Latin name is Salvia apiana which means “healing”.


Post statement this blog was written over a week ago and was filed as a draft. Today, my White Sage was delivered and gifted with much love and heart from our daughter Rikki. By Christmas I’ll have completed my own piece of prayer calling on my ancestors, the angels, healers and Jesus Christ alike.

I hope to share this experience with you.

 

Can’t Wait for this Weekend

I use to have our Grandson often beginning upon his birth. He’s 11 now. This year I haven’t seen him as much since his mom lives farther away. Original plans were to pick him up Saturday morning and take him to the swap meet auction with us and drop him back home after. I called him back having already prepared before doing so to ask him what I knew he’d be happy for. I asked him if he’d like to spend the night too and go to Church with us the next morning as well before his Papi drops him home before work,

Spongebob FunI asked him to bring his hoodie and if he was ready to camp. He said yes Nana. I said do you understand what that means?, He said yes Nana. We’re going to snuggle up and drink hot chocolate and camp out. While this won’t be in a tent outside it will be a little similar.

I’ve been working this morning to get it ready for us. While I’m not certain yet, I may even simulate a camp fire with firewood in the smaller BBQ in order to toast marshmallows and sit around a fire for a few.

I can’t wait to share our fun and make new memories.

 

The Simpler Things

My aspirations are much simpler now. They include living each day however I might in a different mindset that I had previously. If I hadn’t gone through all that I have, especially the last 3 years and definitely since February of 2016 I most likely would still be thinking as I did then and doing as I did then. I most likely wouldn’t have even found a way to go on, yet I have.

images - beach

 

I might have stayed depressed waiting and wondering why or if ever I would feel okay enough in body again. That’s heavy. Don’t we all feel that way? Or most of us?

I use to think that physicians were suppose to help us. I don’t even believe that anymore. I know sometimes people expect me to choose one side or another of something. I don’t choose like that.

Perhaps some of it , my lack of forming words or expressing myself correctly enough to others is from abrupt discontinuation of medications so many times, or the TBI’s I’ve had or my Cerebral Palsy is catching up to me a little more, or the mental break downs as a result of unmanageable physical pain. You know brain fried?

Or just believing that I’m responsible for me above anyone or anything else.

Maybe. Or maybe I do express myself well enough and it’s just perception. Some people can’t wait to be offended. I suppose it’s easy enough to just ask for clarification, but the human emotion rather feel slighted so they have something to fight for or against.

I didn’t even use to be a TV person. Not like I am now. I enjoy watching a Series. I had pretty much given up writing, 100’s of poems and lyrics over the years. I couldn’t squeeze in joy for myself. I’ve taken up painting. I can’t stroke right, or brush evenly, I don’t have enough feeling in my thumb, forefinger, and my middle of finger of that same hand locks from curving. I can barely feel one side of that arm up to my elbow. I still use that hand. I’m ambidextrous which has helped me greatly.

I enjoy making my husbands food even if it takes me all day. A couple of days ago I was cutting an onion and sliced the palm of my left hand. On Thanksgiving it did the same thing to tip of my finger. I have choices. Stop using these hands to prevent accidents or keep using them. I need to use them. My legs ache often, my CRPS type 2 is so so right now only because of the colder weather but I move my legs everyday, ankle raises, knee raises, back movement, arms. I don’t have full body CRPS, I do have full body various other diagnosis’ including both my lumbar and cervical spine.  If I didn’t stretch, my flesh would constrict against my bones and my pain would be escalated.

I was barely 33 when my life stopped as a result of CRPS. Or is that I let my life stop because of it. I’m still thinking about that.

I’m a caregiver to my husband who also isn’t well. My son is a caregiver to me as needed. He was at the hospital for me, us, during his dads last heart attack last month. He advocated for us with physicians, he stayed in front of me so I could drive the car home from the ER parking hot safely as his dad was being transported from the first hospital to another.

I’m in the process of becoming a member at the Church our son was baptized at years ago. I’m a baptized Lutheran. My goal is to be baptized again by submersion as a local yet Southern Baptist. I miss attending at times and that’s a set back for me. Or is it still progress? My Narcolepsy is worse against right now but I set the cell alarm to vibrate to wake me or keep me from the dozes. I really am learning to manage my own life.

Today I have chicken breasts in the crock pot with a buffalo sauce. It’ll be ready by the time my husband gets home from work tonight about 11:00 p.m.

Not this Saturday but the next we’re going to our local swap meet outside auction, I don’t get out much still relying on someone else to get me anywhere. Over the summer I had myself on a great schedule. Up early, in bed early, but I’ve altered my routines to his schedule. I get a nap each evening between 5:50 and 6:30 p.m. About 7 p.m I make an espresso.

I can’t be amidst pain all day long so I’ve minimized my internet time again. Feeling other people too much only sets pain into my own body.

Heck, maybe I really shouldn’t be on the internet at all. Anything that can get in the way, will. Ha! I have no working computer again and did try to restore my laptop it didn’t work. My husband tried a few days ago too. Nope. One more option and that is to buy an encasing pull the hard drive, enclose it, and go from there.

The one I speak of above hasn’t worked since summer time. I was using my really old back up one, the one that barely did anything because of such an old version of windows but… my dog rushed through the side table, tangled in the cord and to the ground it went before I could catch it from making contact.

Actually, I do have a working comp it’s just not mine, but am grateful to use it.

Is there even such a thing as bad luck? I’m not even sure about that one anymore. Randomness.

I was filling out an application the other night and the entire page went down during it. Maybe that wasn’t meant to be either yet I could change it by doing so again. Nah.

My aspiration is to live.

My crock pot is my best friend and my home made cafe mocha makes me smile.

I wish you smiles today!

Hardships as Blessings

How many of you consider pain or hardships as blessings?

While pain, hardships, disability, or inability are not things we’ve asked for in our lives, they can, if we let them, teach us, help us better when the next crisis comes a long. They also teach us compassion, even if we were already compassionate people. Sometimes compassion comes in the form of understanding someone like us, who shares our illnesses, but what about compassion for those who aren’t us? Those who’s illnesses perhaps are different?

I’ve been blessed. So blessed that I know what it is to be homeless and I’m not speaking of homeless in another person’s home. Are you really homeless if someone else puts a roof over your head? You may not have your own home, but someone else has given you theirs, therefore how homeless are you?

All those things we take advantage of yet aren’t necessities. Hot water, heat, air. These are not things that cause me stress they can however reduce my ability to progress in pain because it’s take effort that most in pain can’t or won’t achieve. For quite some times there wasn’t any working toilets either. Imagine that. It was easy enough to accomplish, so you potty in something else.

I learned so many different ways to feed us, bathe us, heat us and cool us. Mostly these are things our world takes for granted.

I consider them being lessons. And I imagine what it was like 200 years ago. Living off the land, cooking with coals, or wood, fetching water from a stream and heating it for those things we needed. And with that, I’ve learned.

I know that if our world is ever compromised, or if, can I be funny now? The zombie apocalypse happens, if marshal law is ever enforced, or if it just gets harder and harder in America, I will survive.

I’ll survive right along with those who shelter in coves, underground, on the river, in the mountains, on the streets. Will you?

It seems that I’m harsh sometimes, I know. The perception of most is that I’m without compassion and that I don’t understand you. On the contrary I do and that is why I won’t go silent about the things that can really help you, save you, assist you.

Look, I don’t care about your pain medication or how much you need it, I care about you being able to live without it when that day comes for you. I don’t care about what you have, or how your life is over because of it, I care about how it is possible to live with it, if you want to.

Easy for me to say, right? We live in a society that believes that someone else is responsible for our lives, our pain relief, our live or give up. No one is not really.

There was a lady who attended the Gohl Method program with me the second time. She’s a nurse. She has CRPS. She was born into a country that the only way to get food was to stand in a line, food controlled by the government, a country that America isn’t, not yet.

The lady came here and she thrived in education.

Yet we put down all the immigrants because they are somehow less than us. Funny thing is that they are grateful to be able to buy their own food, from their own earnings, they are prouder Americans than most Americans are because they know a different type of suffering.

The lady has CRPS, gets her MLT treatment again, and she goes on with her life. We can though, we can’t go on with our lives because we expect healthcare to somehow do the work for us we should be doing ourselves and for ourselves.

Facebook isn’t good for me and I’ll leave that down for a bit still. The things I post are taken as offensive and then I get defensive. Facebook is both a save from isolation for some and it causes further isolation for others.

I think that twitter, or blogging is better for me. I didn’t run away and even though it may seem as such to some and while I had tried to tell myself I wouldn’t deactivate it again and instead simply not log in, for me, it is my better choice for an optimal break.

The same day that I deactivated I attended a training webinar.  I’m still a Medtronic Patient Ambassador. Stronger Than Pain INC isn’t mine, I’m only apart of it for my son.

My wishes are bigger. They are for life not for inability to live life or stay in it.

I don’t believe it’s any physicians job to change my life. They can assist me, but I have to make that difference. Heart disease, diabetes 2, multiple other illnesses that people end up with whether primary or secondary are for us to change. I don’t believe that physicians prescribe opioids just to prescribe them. I’ve been denied for alternative care too. I believe that if addiction, misuse or overdose occurs that we chose to do that to ourselves. If a medicine is prescribed every 8 hours then taking it again 2 hours later is leading to your own destructive behavior. I believe that in part, some documented opioid related overdoses were in fact suicides. While my faith is low for western medicine it’s not because of a push for or lack of prescribing opioid analgesics.

Pain? I can’t reverse much of my own musculoskelatal disorders, some of which caused to worsen by not doing more for myself.  (If this offends you, you’ll understand better when you realize much of what you ended up with wasn’t a direct result of your original diagnosis, but what you let happen to yourself as a result. How dare I say “what you let happen?”) I know you want to tell me how you never asked for it. You’re right, you didn’t, but you need to find your way even in pain, or…

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are injuries or pain in the human musculoskeletal system, including the joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, tendons, and structures that support limbs, neck and back.
But after a really hard decline, clearing my body of all medications, stretching, working on my mindset, I’ve been able to halt progression of those problems.
My pain relief can be found in your food section of a grocery store.
I had turned my SCS off upon my first treatment of MLT in late October of 2016. It remained off during my second 5 days of treatment in mid January of 2017. I was able to keep it off for quite sometime after.
It’s been back on for a few months now.  This isn’t a negative but a positive in that my SCS affords me my own continuity of care without drugs prescribed or otherwise.
Have you ever been blessed by your pain or hardships?
I have and I’ll teach you from each of them.
Take it or leave it.
I know you’re listening
Even if you can’t stand it.
Godspeed. Gratitude- Maya Angelou

It’s enough because …

And my faith is enough because…

And because if I don’t for me,

No one else will,

Nor should they have to.

Gratitude.

Week in Review

I haven’t so much gotten many breaks this year aside from MLT but I’m much better able to handle the stressors.  The last couple of months has been pulling our home out of foreclosure, my husband returning to work, dealing with loss of insurance and then thinking its merge into covered california coverage would be at least somewhat affordable, but it wasn’t. My previous post about starting PT again was hopeful for a minute. The authorization and appointment was scheduled in days. It would have begun November 2nd. Our insurance ends October 30th. I had already lost care for my SCS and CRPS in February of 2016 this new appointment was separate under Medicare and for my spine only.  Even though I have lifetime medical under Worker’s Compensation it’s not that easy.  My injury was so long ago even physicians who accept WC have declined to take me as a patient.  My previous PMD didn’t get paid for his services for me for 5 years straight until he proceeded to court on it. I understand that a doctor needs to get paid and my adjuster nearly always delayed or denied. I’ve been in the process of closing out that future medical since the end of June 2017. It could take years. It hasn’t provided me nothing.

Our second daughter Rikki and her Fiance are moving to Texas. They’ve sold their home and will be leaving any day now.

Our son was activated for the California Fires (Sonoma) Emergency State Active Duty (ESAD) IC4U Unit. He works for the Solano County Sheriff’s Department and was already driving into it each day for his position securing the courthouse, but then was called to duty.  Ozra is also the CEO and President of Stronger Than Pain so he has a lot on his plate too.  Especially for having not turned 21 yet.

Kurtis Ozra IC4U Unit Telecommunications Specialist

I know there’s a difference between those who’ve fought and who are fighting overseas and in combat zones. Ozra is State side. I’m just as proud because we need help too.  Our devastations need these units to protect us as well. Both of my dad’s served in Vietnam. My current dad (my mom parted from my birth daddy in death in September of 1991 and married her childhood sweetheart years later)  was active in front line combat in the nam. He still has shrapnel in him. He’s both retired military and retired law enforcement. My daughter Rikki served in the Army, her fiance did 2 hard tours including Afghanistan. My husband was Navy for a minute and his father 21 years in the air force, his mama was an original Rosie. He flew them, she built them.  My husbands brother was a Navy Seal, we lost him in 2016. My husband was born in his parents 40’s, they have both been deceased since our early 20’s My dad died 10 months before his dad, and his mom barely 2 years later.  Ozra never met any of them, but I know they know him.

I’m severely behind in trying to catch up on anything internet or social media related. Our internet only became active for ourselves less than 2 weeks ago. Email has been a chore. I’m using an old laptop, so old it doesn’t even connect to certain sites because of browsers being out of date. Can’t update because they aren’t supported with such an old version of Windows. I’m grateful though that I have partial access at least and that’s been good enough.

Our grandson ‘Tai is thriving and our oldest Kharisma is hanging in there.

Currently, I’m working on returning my breathing machine to the sleep source center, cancelling that new PT appointment, and getting my other laptop restored though I’m not as on that as I could be.

My day’s are:

Move my body out of bed

(After sleeping, I’m sore and stiff)

Make coffee

(Do a few stretches using the kitchen counter)

Start home chores

(Have coffee)

Feed my dogs

(Try to feel awake and reduce pain from rising)

Internet and email

(As much as I can however limited from myself or something else)

Rest

(Stretch)

It’s repetitive all day.  Do, naps, do, rest, do and do some Netflix, too.

 

I go to Church as much as I can. Sometimes I go, but don’t stay for group.  It’s embarrassing for me to doze when Pastor speaks. I’m learning better that it’s okay, but I’m not so okay with it yet that I would let me fall asleep on them like that knowing it’s coming.

We start Church with a set of 3 songs and end with 1.  I’m finally able to stand for most of them.   A few times I’ve been able to for all, but not every time.  Progress still.  Of course I pay for my standing, singing, and wish to be with others, but I’ll do it again because I want to that much.

I just restarted PreNatal Vitamins as a source of a once a day with extra in it.  There’s no baby on the way.  Just another alternative to feel as good as I can without those things we sometimes hope for elsewhere.

Until next time…

 

Upcoming week

We’re going over to our daughter Kharisma’s next week for a BBQ. I’m looking forward to seeing her and spending time with LaLa’s mom. Will get over to Ozra’s some time this week. I haven’t seen his new apartment yet. May see Rikki later today.

Started laundry about 6 a.m. this morning. Thinking about a camping trip next month. Don’t think we’ll go for more than a day. Was invited for the few days, but I won’t leave my dogs that long. Just can’t do it. I do love camping though. Great family memories of the times we spent in Rumsey at the Cache Creek Campground in Yolo County.

images - beach1

I like to visualize a little cabin or hut on a beach. No electricity, no internet, bare necessities, a few books, and my dogs. Yes, my husband too but I’d probably be the one to have to hunt for our food, cook it, serve it, and clean up after it.

Never mind! I don’t want the beach anymore. lol

Happy Tuesday!

 

 

 

Check out

I spent the morning with my family before check out. Last night was suppose to be G’bye for now, but my husband took me back over this morning so that I could braid my moms hair and see her one more time. They should arrive back home in Georgia in about 10 days.

I was spoiled with other life stories I had never heard, a new bathing suit (Okay not really new but brand new to me. It was my little sisters new one :)). I was spoiled with precious time, love, and new memories with them. They gifted me with a new hip/shoulder bag from Disneyland. I felt like a little kid again. My littlest sister asked me again to move to Georgia, my mom wishes I could. I had made plans to go last year yet there would be so much to do in order to. I’d either have to sell my home or rent it out, repair it before any of that and just toss most of it away. While I want to my biggest concern or worry if you will is letting it all go to start over and then if I lost them I’d be left in a place that’s not my home. It’s only my home because it’s theirs and I’ve never lived there. Home is where the heart is until the heart no longer exists.

I can adapt to change because I have to. I don’t favor it otherwise and I rather not seek it to find it. Ha! Change is really the only thing that’s constant.

“The way up and the way down are one and the same”. ~Heraclitus

This year has truly been a blessing on so many levels. I’ve come so far in such little time. Enlightened at a much higher level. As an empath/sensitive I always carried my pain and yours. And while I may not ever be able to set that aside, I know better to remove myself from such pains that instigate my own.

My physical pain is manageable without any medications. My emotional stability is stable. Neither of these are to insinuate they no longer exist but instead show that even in trauma regardless of the type or anything overlapping that our animal instinct as humans can guide our survival.

What a ride it’s been!

RSD/CRPS and other conditions as well stimulate the stress response. Fight or Flight. Fight or run away. Fight, flight or freeze as it’s also come to be known. If your hungry you’re going to find your food. If you’re threatened your survival instinct is to survive. If you’re in pain your instinct would be to relieve it. Pain of any kind effects our minds. Some people are enraged to hear such things because they have to defend their pain as not being mental. It’s all mental. Without your brain, you’re mind, we couldn’t feel pain therefore mental health is always a coexisting factor.

Isolation.

Aside from having not driven but a handful of times in 17 years due to the CRPS injury and having to rely on my husband and then my children to go anywhere at all and the fact that my drivers license continues to dangle on the edge of suspension due to Narcolepsy, I’m more interested in being able to again than saying I never will.

I’m more interested in recognizing other peoples pain than I am in awareness right now. I love listening to other people’s stories because lets face it everyone is unique in what they endure. Without those people there isn’t anything to raise awareness for.

I didn’t want to see my mom go but I have to adapt again to not having her. I will.

Ozra, Me and Mom - June 30, 2017 resized

June 30th, 2017. Saying G’bye before they drove to Disneyland and the last time my son would be with his grandparents on this trip.

My son has only met his grandparents a few times in his life. My mom and my step father. He’s never met my dad as he was already deceased 6 years before Ozra was born. Ozra has never met his paternal grandparents because they both died years before his birth. I can still remember his little voice asking me “Why didn’t they stay to meet me”?Heartbreaking. Our daughters being much older than him had the privilege of meeting all of them and they do retain vague memories. Happy ones.

Ozra and Mom resized

I have a really tall son! Us girls are all shorties. I’m actually the tallest of my mom and my sister (the one she gave birth to, not my adopted sister. Wait! I’m taller than Rosie, too! :)). My sons dad, my husband of 30+ years is inches shorter. His sisters (Same father of course) have no height either. Our second daughter Rikki is an inch taller than I. Kharisma didn’t get an extra inch. ~laughs. Our grandson is already taller than me and he’s 11.

Progress continues.

If I don’t get outside to my little pool and do my routines, I’ll dwell on not having done it. 😛

I love you mom!

Making New Memories

I went swimming with my family yesterday. When my Grandson arrived at the Hotel I swam a lap with him. It was the first time I had ever actually swam with ‘Tai. I’ve spent hours in little pools with him over the years, but swimming wasn’t included.

Pool side conversations of past, present and future were plentiful. My mom told me of a conversation my sister had with someone, a statement regarding who would love her and care for her if my mom and dad passed from this life. My mom told her that I would. And I will. My parents are a year from their 70’s. Rosie is 15.

I told my grandson that I would be over soon to spend the day with him. I miss being with him. I need to go see my sons new place too.

What I need to do first though is see my mom again later this afternoon or evening as they’re staying another night in order to spend time with my step brother today. They’re at Church right now. They do that even when they’re away from home.

I’ve always said a prayer over food, even if it’s a silent one. My mom always says one for everyone at a table whether those people pray or not because she doesn’t want the devil sitting down to eat with her. It’s both hilarious (I mean no disrespect) and quite serious because now I can’t eat because of that most scary image implanted in my mind. I must pray differently now before taking a bite. lol Truth.

I wish you all a beautiful day.

Image Credit by Ozra September 24, 2015 Bay Area CA_1.

Image Credit by Ozra

 

 

Family and Blessings

My mom and dad arrived in Sacramento June 28th and headed to Southern California on July 1st. Today I’ll see them once more before they leave back to Quincy and then drive back to Georgia.

They came so that my dad could see his brother and make funeral arrangements for him due to inoperable end stage cancer. My dad also has cancer and my mom has a pacemaker keeping her heart beating.

They took my sister and her friend to Disneyland this last week as she had never been there before. My little sister was born my niece, but my parents have raised her since she was a baby and so I acknowledge her as my sister instead.

thankful- grateful- blessed

This visit was the first time in all my 16 years that I was able to be with them without taking naps, or laying down. Without being overwhelmed by pain or in a mindset of pain. I even swam a few laps for the first time in all those years. My arms and legs did fairly well, my lower spine ended up flaring a little afterward and that might be because of the prior week and having started more aggressive movements and stretches for my back in my little pool.

I might not be able to do the things I still have wishes for, but I know that everything I’m doing is keeping my blood flowing better throughout my extremities, and I know that each stretch is keeping my flesh circulating with less tissue restriction and edema and therefore keeping pain from reaching an uncontrollable point.

For certain my orthotics also make an incredible difference because when I don’t wear them my entire physical alignment is disturbed and I end up leaning forward just to be up after standing. Having flat feet never did me any justice.

My family will be arriving back in Sacramento in a couple of hours and then I’ll be spending the remainder of the day with them before saying G’bye for now this evening.

Heading out to my kiddie pool to get an hour in before meeting them.

Love ‘n light.

 

 

 

Fine Lines

There can be such fine lines between doing and not doing, trying and not trying enough, managing time and wasting it, finding balance and not balancing at all.

I’ve driven now twice since not having drove but a handful of times in 17 years. While both times were only a few blocks away it is a starting point. Next time I’ll turn left and go down farther to the shopping center about a mile from home. Most likely repeating that quite a few times before trying further.

I’ve hit a few lows in wondering if all this is just too good to be true. This is because in order to maintain pain relief from the original CRPS Type 2 diagnosis and the several secondaries along the way, I have to do physical routines daily in order to keep it from ever being what it had become. These routines can cause their own pain because of the lack of activity and movement as a result of the injuries and illnesses that either initially or had eventually overcame me. Many of those things that I did to comfort myself from reaching the edge were some of the same things that were to my own detriment. Hanging my legs off the bed in order to try to sleep because my feet and legs were either too swollen, allodynia, hyperalgesia, burning etc. Using pillows, several, in order to prop myself into positions to ease pain, but at the same time it taught my body to develop even more damage.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett

We aren’t taught how to be able to care for ourselves in simple manners that are the greatest of all. We’re told go exercise, lose weight, quit smoking (if you do) and that’s about it anymore. Great advice, but it’s only advice. There isn’t any teaching in it and people leave still wondering how, how in all of it. If you have chronic pain of any type it’s because something in you, illness or injury has lasted beyond 3 months (used to be 6 months for that classification).

Some people do get the pain medications, the opioid management, pain management, lumbar or cervical block injections, procedures etc. Yet none of these get people healthier again. None of them teach living with pain. They either disguise pain awhile, fail, or side track a person from learning how to themselves. Other medications such as SSNRI’s and Anti Seizures such as Cymbalta and Neurontin are over prescribe, handed out like candy and more adverse than the opioid itself. I promise you that. Opioids taken responsibly is less a problem than the lifetime problem that stays with you long after getting off those other types. We may have natural opioid receptors in our brains, but our brains (and minds) aren’t meant to be altered to the point future damage.

I’m not anti opioid.  I’m anti leave someone where they are when there are other options in relief that aren’t suggested or believed in by mainstream western medicine. I believe in CAM or Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. I believe in the Gohl Program. I believe in Integrative Pain Medicine.

Yet these services are rarely offered, or are not covered by insurance. I myself was denied for Acupuncture my second year into all this. (2003). I could have been cured, or in remission right away, but instead we keep people bouncing the healthcare systems, costing billions, left disabled, unable to contribute to society, getting sicker when we have the capability to get people back into their lives. If we do, even more billions are lost in profits, revenues and work for the working class. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t and that’s the world we live in. If it’s not about me it’s about you. Will it ever be about us? I already know the answer to that.

I’m glad that The Academy of Integrative Pain Management previously The American Academy of Pain Management has merged the concept of healing by both standards of care. I’m thrilled to have been a State Pain Policy Advocacy Network Leader (SPPAN) which is a project of of the AIPM/AAPM for several years. I’m happy to have been former California Ambassador, Executive Board Member, Advocacy Director and Healthcare advisor for the International Pain Foundation 2011-November 2016. I’m happy to still be a Medtronic Patient Ambassador. I’m glad to have represented iPain as a member of the Opioid Prescribing Taskforce via the Medical Board of California and for being 1 of perhaps 3 patient advocates who were apart of the Revised Standard Guidelines for Prescribing Controlled Substances For Pain. I’m happy that I attended with and testified on behalf of pain patients with the California Medical Association (DeSaulnier)

I’m not happy that I fell hard in the midst of the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain — United States, 2016 as they were being implemented, recommended and circulated. The Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain CDC. I’m blessed to be part of the public record, written and on the last call pertaining to the Guidelines. The call that determined whether or not to enact the recommendation. Which had been determined before the call had ended in case you didn’t know.

Instead of saving lives and allowing physician’s to care for their patients under their own oath it instilled fear in providers to prescribe or even address pain at all. I do not care that the Guideline’s were meant for primary care doctors because it caused fear for all doctors including pain management specialists.

I have to be a responsible patient, yes? I have to be in compliance, yes? Yet there is little to no responsibility or consequences for non compliance in others or those who believe they are above anyone else. Everybody’s pain day will come, if even by old age alone.

I’ve lost my reputation online, but offline my words are different. I’m different. This doesn’t mean I’m a different person it means that perceived perception, written content and context is taken as you will. Believed or Imagined. Generally just a fantasy in your own minds.

I’m diverse.

Online I no longer care. I’m both polite, knowledgeable, caring and I’m blunt, potty mouthed and adverse. Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary to the second time I attempted suicide as a result of pain and errors and not just my fear in it all, but the fear in overdose, the fear to prescribe, the fear to keep your medical licenses, the fear of the DEA, the fear of scrutiny, the fear to take care of your own families and I actually understand. I actually feel your side of it. I feel you when you’ll do almost anything to maintain your reputation even if you’ll lie to do it.

When you can feel my husband of 31 years side of it, or my 3 children’s broken heart in it.

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Maybe I’ll care again the same way I used to. Though I hope not because I really cared too much about everyone else, what ever one else needed, or wanted. Right now it’s all about me and overcoming the challenges of living through what I can’t ever change for me in this lifetime, or what I can never take back in the option of suicide, but I can still help change it for others.

They are fine lines, after all.