Borys: Hello my name is Borys.
All: Hi Borys
Borys: It has been 17 years, 2 months, 1 week and 7 days since my last pain free day….
November 19th. This day 12 months ago, BigSal and Surly opened their Pizza Capers store and some dumb bint in a Mazda RX8 ran up the arse of my car on my way home from work. Massive flare up of previous pain ensues and hasn’t receded to date. It seems to have been the straw that has broken the camels back if you’ll pardon the expression. One year…. 12 Months…. 52 weeks… 365 days of going to bed in pain every night and waking up in pain every morning. It’s pervasive and unrelenting and I AM EXHAUSTED..
Exhausted from not sleeping. Exhausted from trying to ignore it. Exhausted from the aggravation caused by doing stupid little everyday things. Exhausted from trying to keep it to myself. Exhausted with the amount of concentration needed to be social and interested in other people. Exhausted from the effort required to keep going… forcing myself to get out of bed in the morning and just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.
Stupid little every day things are sooo hard. I’ll be driving and go to shift into second gear causing a momentary sharp pain in my left shoulder blade. Or I’ll shoulder check to merge lanes and sharp pain will shoot through my neck muscles. Or I’ll be standing at the kitchen bench and by the tiime I have diced an onion I’m feeling severe pain in my lower back and getting physically flustered because I’ve been inadvertently holding my breath against the pain. Or I’ll go for a walk up a flight of stairs causing my neck to go ‘crunch’ which makes me feel nauseous. Or I’ll be outside to pull some weeds in the backyard and be at it for barely 15 minutes when I have to stop because my back hurst so much it”s literally making my hands shake. Or I’ll reach up to press the garage door button or reach down to pick something up off the ground and my neck or upper back will go into massive painful spasms for no apparent reason. Or maybe I’ll do something really stupid like try and lift up my sewing machine onto the table and then have so much back pain I can’t sit and sew for more then 10 minutes. Or I’ll be doing something totally outside my control like standing in the queue at the bank or the checkouts at the supermaket and my lower back pain becomes so bad that I find I’m holding my breath, getting literally twitchy, uncomfortable, hot and bothered with the effort required to just stand still for 5 mins..
Nothing seems to make a dent in the pain. The drugs don’t alleviate it at all… though I am grateful for the Valium for without those four or five hour a night of unconsciouness (I’m reluctant to call it sleep) I don’t think I’d be fuctioning enough to make it through the day. It’s exhausting and very, very depressing. I try so hard (with varying degrees of success) not to let on how shit I feel and I constantly find myself thinking that I don’t know how much more of this constant pain I can take…. but none of the so called experts know what to do so what fucking options do I have?
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