It was May 1999 and I was 44 when my first gallstone colic hit. It was a doozy. All three of them were, and then I had my gall bladder removed on July 7, 1999. Four small incisions and one small organ removed, but when I woke up, the pain was in my back, not in the front. It's pain that makes a person wiggle in agony. My surgeon was puzzled. The nurse thought a pillow would help. (Yes, just like aspirin would help an ax in the head. lol)
Within a day, the pain traveled to the front, right around my waist up to right under my lower ribs. The pain is both inside and out. Inside feels like a steel tourniquet. Outside sometimes comes as Charlie horses. There are other kinds of pain, but the tourniquet is there always.
Guess where the gall bladder is. So, doctors assumed I was recovering from surgery. Not that. It got worse, and I knew what the pain felt like from the surgery. Four months later, they finally believed me. Pain in front -- right along my upper intestines -- so I spent the next five months taking every tests a GI could think of, finding out my LES (lower esophagus sphincter) and my SOD (Sphincter of Oddi -- I always thought we had one sphincter, and that's not where it is. lol) were spasming to the point where they tightened like a vice and wouldn't relax. It was agony. It made the gallstones passing feel like child's play. It also wasn't just those two muscles spasming, but that's what the test said from a GI. It falls under the IBS umbrella, but usually folks with IBS have problems in the intestines.
1999 into 2000. January 1, 2000 is a famous day most people don't know even happened. That was the day doctors and hospitals had to start treating patients for pain. Good thing. I remember seeing a dead water bug (looks like a cockroach to me, but hubby says there's a difference) under our sofa while writhing in pain lying in the middle of our living room floor. I remember spending hours in bed, flat on my face to ease the pain. Doctors didn't want to give me anything for fear it would "mask the test." The tests were once every 4-6 weeks. What was wrong with giving me pain meds until a few days before the tests? January 1, 2000. The day they finally got that argument, but even then, it was 20 pills to last me 2-4 weeks. I got to choose which three hours of which days I wanted to ease my pain. (I was not a happy camper. I was not happy with God either.)
The last thing they could think to try was a shot in the back. The pain specialist told me if it didn't work, I'd have to learn to live with it. I told him I didn't. He got what I meant, and I was serious. (The shot caused new pain! Peachy.) That brought about two different things -- a promise to hubby that I wouldn't kill myself and shrinks. The promise was the hardest thing to keep. One of those shrinks tried self-hypnosis on me. (I am perfectly aware of what's going on around me, so not "under.")
During one of those sessions, (my last one, since that answered my question), she got me to imagine standing at the edge of a cliff and to shout the question I wanted most answered. It was directed at God and the obvious question: "Why me, God?"
I don't believe God talks to people often. I didn't hear his voice answering, but the point came back clear and fast, "Why not you?"
I laughed. He has a point.
24+ kinds of drugs, some taking months to adjust to over a period of nine months, and we finally find one that makes the pain bearable -- oxycodone. Lovely. I'm an ex-druggie.
God gave me whatever it is (I don't know if it's a miracle or his strength, but it's definitely him) to stay on oxycodone for this many years. People develop a tolerance for the drug, so doctors tend to give more to compensate. My original doctor told me any more than six a day would slowly kill my liver. I was on 10/650 oxycodone -- no more than five per day, for about a decade. My pain is always there, but it's tolerable. Then I got worried about the liver damage, so I asked my doctor (different guy), if I can lower it. I'm down to 5 mg. (no more NSAIDs with it, just straight) -- 3-4 a day.
Am I addicted? Strangely not. Screw-ups happen. (I'm never sure if I should blame the insurance company, pharmacy, or doctor, but about once every other year something gets screwed up, and I'm denied my script for a couple of weeks.) I've run out. The pain is back with full vengeance, but no withdraws.
As of May 2001, I finally got on Disability just in time for hubby to lose his job. (Back pay came in, so we had some money.) Little did we know that was also his last job. I was angry with God for letting me become disabled. Furious when we ran out of money -- that back pay and our entire retirement money. There is no word to describe the rage when I discovered it was God's will to take down hubby with disabilities too. As angry as I was, I could not deny God is. There's just too much history between us to deny him.
I don't know how I learned about it, but I learned about this book by Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes called When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty. The foreword says not to read it if you're angry with God, but I was and wanted to get over it, so what did I have to lose?
Now, I don't just have Why-not from God. I have his Why too. He's forgiven me, and I get why he needs hubby and me like this. For the usual reasons. To trust him. I'm just a bit (incredibly) pigheaded, so he has me here to remind me of Romans 8:28 more often.
Last summer, after 15 years now doctors tell me what caused it. They pinched a nerve in my back when they moved me off the operating table. (Same doctor who didn't know what it was when it first happened, but I came back to her 15 years later. I'm pretty sure they were all covering for the surgeon. All I wanted was to fix it or $50,000 to pay off the mortgage. It was a mistake. I get that, but it changed my life, so even-up.) And, now, because my original pain stopped me from doing anything that required that part of my abdomen, my entire back is a mess, because abdominal muscles protect the back, and I have very little abdominal muscles left. Now my back hurts equal to my front.
Okay, so God's still working on me.
