Chronic Pain Lifestyle

The Most Amazing Thing Happened to Me Tomorrow

     Imagine, of all people, me.  An email arrived from Lagos, Nigeria yesterday from a barrister, a private barrister, of a deposed royal family, who because of their lineage, were forced to leave Nigeria with only the clothes on their backs.  They are in hiding in desperate fear of their lives.

     The email went on to explain that a secret cache of their fortune remains behind in Nigeria, and that if I, known to this lawyer though secret sources, will claim their $30 million dollars, it will be wired to me at my bank.  I may keep $5 million for my trouble.  Then I'm to send the remainder to a Swiss bank, that will be made known to me on my confirming that I've received the $30 million.  My "sterling" character is enough proof to the lawyer that I'll do the right thing, that the family will trust me on my solemn word to send them $25 million US bucks!

    Hah!

     I'm packing my bags.  I'm taking ALL the dough and hobbling-off into the sunset.  Been nice knowing you!  I'll send you all a post card.  YOU HAVE MY STERLING WORD!

     Seriously, who hasn't received this email?  Sometimes it's a Russian family, Chinese family, etc., but it's always royalty.  Granted I do run in those circles, so it's no surprise that my "contacts" have picked me.  It is a funny, funny world. Have you noticed it lately.  I'm sitting at the keyboard, so it hurts me to write this, but that doesn't make the world any less comical.

     Who thought this hummer up?

     What chimp in humans clothing actually believes this stuff.  Someone must, or this scam would have been moth-balled years ago.  I think I know the angle: at some point you'd have to divulge your bank routing number and account number for the "BIG DOUGH" to be wired in, which by the way is the same info a con artist would need to empty your account. Oh, they'd need your name and social security number , too.

     Think though, not of global wackiness, but of bad pain days.  With AA always with us, we have the wonderful benefit of a world and its' helpful population that offer us laughs 24/7/365.  And it's there whether we choose to see it or not.  On your next bad day, open your eyes to the myriad lunacy that surrounds us.  See if that helps. God bless, Colin

Drop the mask, and go say hi to a stranger....

    After starting this blog 23 days ago, has it really been only 23 days, It became apparent to me that if I wanted to develop a site, I'd have to change one of my defects of charachter.

     What I'd have to do is reach out to people beyond my comfort circle, introduce myself, and begin developing relationships.  This worked best when I said to myself:  screw-it, here I am, this is what I do, this is what I believe, here's my goal, WILL YOU HELP ME?

     I try for total honesty, and although I probably still embelish too much, begin "Hi you don't know me..." letters with my story.  I go first; then ask someone their story. I share my fears, really fess-up, and hope that enough credibility and trust builds a bridge from me to another person who I didn't know 28 days ago.

     Guess what, IT REALLY WORKS.  In a very short period  I've reached a point where most of these relationships begin to turn into friendships. 

     Readers have contacted me sharing sad, funny, poignant anecdotes and stories.  Stuff I'd like to share, but they're not mine to diseminate.  Please, if you've got something to say, and want to do it anonymously,  take a shot!  I'll publish your story on my site. Drop me an email: you may find, as I and a number of my new friends who I've reached out to, that pouring it out is cathartic.  The pain doesn't go away, but I feel like a have a job; I feel purposeful.  A void I didn't even know existed, is filling.

     I owe special thanks to a few people:

• Chronic Babe, who surprises me daily a new good deed.  Please hit her site, read her stuff, she's got a great attitude and is funny. Drop her a comment, and get to know her. You can find links to her site peppering this site. but for simplicity go to:  www.chronicbabe.com .  She's a hottie ( her words. but I drop a ballot for her being a hottie).  She also doen't know that she's a "wicked pissah" Bostonian for good peeps.
• Gimpy Mumpy, whose sense of humor is transendant.  Feeling a liile lowish hit Gimpy.  Please be respectful of Gimpy's privacy. There isn't a wasted page on this site.  Gimpy Mumpy (?) is also on my must reads. Another friendly person, who like the Babe, jumps at the opportunity to do a good deed.  Please go to: http://mumpy.typepad.com/gimpy_mumpy/ Gimpy Mumpy is also wicked pissah!
• If I were mentioning individual readers of Chronic Pain Lifesyle, I'd have to mention Jack, who did a particularly good deed by mistake. Jack bumped into a web-site thinking that the photographs that decorate my site so beautifully, were my photo's. They aren't. A little detective work and I found the artist whose work, "...captures the pain and struggles we all feel and experience..."  Dorothy Gantenbein is the artist.  When I first began browsing her site, I was stunned. Her work is breath-taking.  I note later and she not only agreed to allow me to use her published library of photo essays. but shared with me that she's also experienced a lifetime of pain due to severe asthma.  Dorothy is a reaaly nice lady, and seems to welcome feed-back on her work.  I see in her portfolio's, which are still lives of nature, not only great beauty but also an explosive quality, almost as if she hit the shutter one moment before a cataclymic event.  Her black and white treatments of water, and her work with flowers is challenging to the viewer.  How she's able to capture in her work this built-in kinesis is amazing. Do yourself a big favor by browsing her essays. Dorothy dosn't yet sell her photo's. I expect that will change too soon. Enjoy now!:  http://www.dorothyphoto.com/dorothy_photo/,

Many people have gone unmentioned.  Please accept my apology.  You can also expect that I'll have many more down days.  The alexcin of my cure for the blues is not Miles, but spotting the good that has been done for me in this life.  My sincere thanks to Chronic Babe, Gimpy Mumpy, and Dorothy Gantenbein; I look forward to thanking everyone else as time goes by.

Stupidity of a special kind, or how to avert a crisis

       I take 2 "whopper" pain med's every day.  By whopper I mean heavily narcotic.

1. Morhine, 35 mgs. every day. I swore this stuff didn't work, until I tried to ween off of it. I used the Irish method. "Suffer in Silence".  Well, I was wrong, way wrong about it not working. At the least amount I could tolerate, 20 mgs. a day, I managed gritted teeth and no sleep to reach 5 mg.'s/day. I cried alot. My feet burned, as if they were on fire, and other times it just felt as if my skin had been scraped off. My feet and shins feel like this most of the time, but not so severely that I cry.   I couldn't walk.  It felt like walking barefoot across a parking lot covered with granite chips.  The doc and I agreed that we should move my dosage back-up to 35 mg.'s
2. My second whopper is a nasty little lollipop called Actiq, or fentenyl, which is an as needed drug. I can handle up to 8 of the 250's per day.  A one month's supply costs $3,500 bucks.  Some days it hits me like a container-load of ball bearings; other days, I feel that I could operate a gantry crane.  I'm not a longshoreman--I just watched the second season of "The Wire", which is great!

     I've got other stuff too. I have a neurotransmitter implanted in my back and spine.

     Well, with this junk, literally, you'd think that the prescriptions should go right to the pharmacy. You'd think that.  Well, I lost one.  It was inevitable. This stuff, in addition to just numbing my pain (not eliminating it by a long shot) has turned my short term memory to mush. I stuck my prescription in my pocket, and it took a run through the washing machine.  So, no drugs and I have to go begging to the doc for another script.

     One thing I stink at is admitting a screwed-up. Add to this my lack of short term memory and my inability to spell my name and...well, you know. 

     Here's what I did instead: said a prayer. I asked God to help me do his will and to put someone else's needs ahead of my own.  Then I called the doc. Problem solved.

     I've thumped the idea of Faith pretty hard recently.  Most of my readers have probably run for the hills.  The point is, when I take the wheel on my own life, I most often end-up in a ditch. I have nearly gone 20 years without so much as a sip of anything alcoholic, because I was a drunk. I haven't beat the bottle, but I've beat it now. I tried my best to stop. Every trick in the book. Nothing worked until I let God back into my life. Then, with his help, I've been clean. Same with pain.  I can do it the old Irish way, but I already know where that road takes me. So now I'll do my best, pray, and hope that you don't have to make the mistakes I did. 

      It's all the same, pain or booze, death or life, faith or despair. Today I'll take a life of faith, flawed as I am, and try giving my pain to God. He knows what to do with it.  I don't. God bless you all, Colin

Want to Feel Better right away?

      Pick some wild, crazy impossible dream. I dare you.  I'll tell you what I did. I wrote a list of 100 things I wanted to do before I died.  I wrote this list when I was a kid after reading an article about some guy who had done exactly the same thing. It was in Life magazine, sometime in the late 1960S. 

     The difference between he and I was that he kept his list, and the thrust of this article was that he was nearly done. He had written things like, learn to fly a plane, publish a book, paddle the length of the Amazon, climb the Pyramids, and lots of other cool things.  I never forgot the article, and don't know if he finished.

But like I said, I never forgot the article, although I've forgotten the details.  The point was that you and I can really, now with some limitations due to our disease, still do alot of things we'd like to do before we die.

I worked backwards, and in all honesty, tried to crib together a list of things I'd already done, then began adding to this list. I started before my illness kicked in.  What surprised me was how much I'd really accomplished.  I'm not a writer but I'd been published many times. I threw it on the list. I'm not a runner, but managed to run 26 miles, and also run a mile in under 6 minutes. I put them on my list, too.  I've been elected to public office and served a term. Another item on the list. I had kids, another on the list. Somehow snatched a degree in Philosophy from an Ivy League college, the list began to grow. 

I won a Silver Medal in rowing in the national collegiate championships, and competed internationally. More on the list.  Married the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. boom on the list. I've met lots of famous people from Nobel Laureates to movie stars to professional athletes. Shook the President's hand. I own a Rosary that was Blessed by the Pope, and a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  It goes on and on.

It goes on and on...and I bet yours would, too.

I come from a very modest background, but I became wealthy enough to own 2 minor league baseball teams.  It sounds like I'm bragging, I'm really not.  I'm talking now about "stuff", junk really. Hell, it not even mine. It's His.

More than the junk I've collected, I found a path back to my faith.  Just to balance this out, there's also a list of regrets that is at least twice as long.  Those things that I'd redo if I could is embarrassingly long.

When I feel sorry for myself, I can read this list. And you know what, I do feel kind of proud. Life doesn't owe me a thing.  What does your list look like?

One really neat thing. I got to bat against Steve (?) Trout who chucked the pea in at about 85 mph. Couldn't touch it. Shagged flies from the warning track, too.

Last suggestion. Put something new on the list, and today do something that will take you a fraction closer to getting that thing done.  I promise you you'll feel better.

God bless you.  Readership on this site runs about 40-50 people a day, not much, but I guess that does make me a publisher.