Is CP our Identity? The next Chapter

I brought a thread to the forum several weeks ago that took on an extended interest about how we struggle to maintain our identity and how CP has the tendency to take over our and redefine our identity. It read, When things don't go right, we are left thinking, talking, crying and sometimes yelling about our CP. Circumstances like friends and family not understanding our CP, pharmacies questioning us like we are drug addicts, Drs telling us there is nothing they can do, looking ahead at treatments and surgeries and the hope or lack of hope, disappointments with how our bodies react to the pain or even the medications and the list could go on. It is easy to say that we will not let ourselves get caught up in the cycle that CP is our identity but everything around us at times tells us that is who we are. So by popular demand, I have brought it back. How do we maintain some semblance of our identity before CP and what has CP taken away.

Some of the previous posts were very emotional as the struggles we face go deep into who we have become. Here is a small issue that I joked about on another thread but I realize has more to it. When at the new PMS appointment, they told me that I had to give a urine sample. Due to complications after my last surgery and medications, the plumbing does not work the same. It became a major issue and the whole staff was brought into the issue of me not being able to pee on demand. Since the office was new and I was the first patient, the office was also attended by 3 individuals who were there to work on the computer system. In front of all I had to explain why I could not fill the cup. They even discussed that I might not be able to have my appointment. This may sound stupid but all of a sudden I was the man who could not. CP even takes away our dignity in may ways. It seems that we have no private life. Every time we go to the doctor, PT, at time pharamcies etc our whole life is open to medical personell and starngers and that is who we have become.  I hope this makes sense. I am having a very difficult night and I hope my thoughts come through. I try and joke and use humor to cover up hurts and pains at times. A defense mechanism.

The pain clinic where I go shares a waiting room with with two other clinics on three different sides of the waiting room is a different clinic. Well when you first go up to the Pain clinic and sign in, they give you your cup with your name sticker on it, and you walk across the waiting room to the rest rooms and go fill your cup and then bring back to them. Well I guess they thought that was tacky, so now they give you your cup and a brown paper lunch bag, and you walk across the waiting room to the rest rooms and fill your cup and put it in the brown paper bag, and then sit in the waiting room untill they call you back. Where you answer a bunch of questions, and sign and initial in three places, and then they put you in your exam room anf wait for the Doc. It takes a little getting use to, and at first I was really insulted, but the pain Doc is the best Doctor I have ever had! Bar none! He's the best! He takes his time and he listens to you, heck when I told him I was having marital problems he got me a counselor, one that even takes medicare, which is really hard to find in my area! He does it all! So I figure sitting in a waiting room with a brown bag with a container full of pee in it, although not ideal, is a small price to pay. But if he wasn't such a good Doc I sure wouldn't do it! Or would I? To keep the CP under control  dignity be D*****  any thing to keep the pain at bay!

White Beard

Hi again...

PaLady...when you lose something you've typed, always go back several screens as it's likely still in cache. You can do a copy/paste to retrieve it, then bring it forward again to use. Done that many times and most often it works.

I am grateful to you men who are willing to open up topics that are so difficult for most of us. I am fortunate that my family doc takes care of my pain needs, and with the greatest compassion. No contracts, although I hear most people who get pain meds from him usually do but I've known him so long we do business on trust. It's rare these days and I am grateful. That relationship takes away a lot of the miseries so many others have. BUT, the internal emotions are still there. I hate the pills! But I hate the pain more. I feel like I"m myself, but know I'm not. Hubby is worried about my memory as no only does my disorder beat on it but so do the meds. I too try to joke but it hurts so much inside. Some days I just get so flippin' angry at the whole mess but that only increases the pain. So...it's at times like those that I have to remind myself how lucky I am to have a great doc. Many don't.

Gengle Hugs!
Chutzie

You know just when I think I have a handle on things something always comes along to put me in my place I guess. My niece is getting married next month in Tampa, I would love to go to the wedding as it is going to be a very large wedding. She is the last of that generation to get married. But,  I do not know if they allow you to fly with an oxygen tank, Tampa is not a good climate for my breathing at all, my crohns is in one big chit flair due to not being able to start back on my Humira. I have developed cellulitis in my legs. I look like I have elephant legs and they hurt so bad.  They are hot and so swollen, red and very tight. I take Bumex a diuretic that causes severe charley horses thats a nice way to wake up screaming. Because of this stupid cellulitis no Humira, first it was bronchitis, then the terrible virus now this, I do need my Humira badly as I am really suffering. I get so darn tired sometimes of fighting so many different illness'. What so wrong in having all of them just lying there quietly giving me a break. The antibiotic is killing my gut, not sure how much longer I will stay with it, just too many problems.

 

White Beard I think they should come up with a more discreet way to handle the urine situation. I guess when you walk in the waiting room it looks like everyone brought a sack lunch. Hey, think about what a new patient thinks walking in to all these brown bags, say someone that never been in pain mgt,lol. My former dr did the random testing, in 4 yrs I did two tests. But, you peed in a cup and handed it directly to someone waiting outside the door. He also required pill counts but I never did one, I never took my pills in and was not asked to. New dr does not do pee tests, Contracts, or pill counts. Blew me away. According to the FDA this is suppose to help the dr weed out the potential abusers and abusers.

 

Here it is 4:53 and I am still up and awake. Guess I will crash at some point. Hope everyone has a lpd...Susie

Susie, they allow people on Oxygen on the planes. You would need to conatct them ahead of time so they can make the arrangements. Isn't it frustrating when everything you do evolves around our physical weaknesses, illnesses and even the things we take to help us.

Susie, I think I can understand the aggravation. We also know that the aggravation makes things worse. There are times when I just get so fed up with all of it I want to scream and throw things. A couple nights ago, I tried to go to bed but the pain would not let up, I got up and wanted to destroy everything I could get my hands on. My wife just watched me and she knew I was boiling inside. I talked with her today and she said she was proud of me for not throwing things or yelling. I guess thats a victory.  

FatherJohn oh, so you are a thrower too lol. Thats one thing I am really bad about especially when I get to the stage that I am now. I have and I do go out in my backyard and scream at the top of my lungs. about all I manage to do there is send myself into a coughing fit lol. Husband has threatened to go all paper or plastic, I said well hell, go for it, I really don't care at this point. I do get so fed up at times trying to keep everything going and balanced. Susie

Fatherjohn,
Since I prodded you to start this second thread, I feel a little guilty that I've not posted more. It isn't for lack of thinking about the issue of identity, and was CP has done to mine. It's much more because I don't have any clarity right now...although I do know thanks to this thread that it's a major issue for me to work on.

I know that I have been trying for the past couple of years - especially since my surgery - to regain who I was before I was injured. I thought surgery would be the ticket to that. To working again. To having at least a few friends, and certainly to maintaining the ability to pay my bills. A part of me - perhaps too large a part - still is being tugged backward. Because to let that go...I will be crying for days. I know that's not a bad thing; quite the opposite. But it will mean giving up the past. Giving up what I already know in my head is not possible to return to, but have not yet reconciled with my heart. At least I'm more in the middle, maybe starting to climb the fence to the other side, with no idea where I'll land once both legs cross over.

I visited the cats at the Humane Society again yesterday. Somehow that helps me touch base with my essence, which seems so buried. And then I come back to this empty house, to a shelf full of pill bottles, a stack of papers of all sorts, and a list of critical deicisions facing me over the next couple of months as my unemployment runs out, and my COBRA soon comes to an end. I was at my goddaughter's on Sunday for dinner. She works at a local career center - as a matter of fact is the director. But it's not about me finding a job (there are none here at the moment anyway), but she even started to tell me how little cash assistance grants are. This is the young woman I always hoped to help out. The closest thing I have to a daughter. And she knows just how bad it's going to get for me financially. She more than anyone. Those of you with children, think about it in those terms....how that would affect your identity as a parent, as a person. It cuts deep.

PaLady

I think the hardest thing my husband and I had to get thru was the fact that our children had to pay our bills. We had no income for over three years except what they made. They have never show in any way that they resent having to do that but I resent that they had to do that. It is not supposed to be that way. I am supposed to be the one to take care of them, not the other way around. It has just recently gotten to where we can manage on our own without them having to contribute. I think that has bothered me more than anything else about this whole ordeal.

Stlllrecovering,
We must have been posting at the same time. Thank you for sharing that. Like I said in my other post to you, it helps to know others understand. You do.

PaLady

Fatherjohn,
I'll take all the blessings and grace I can get! I need both!

PaLady

Becoming,
You're not rambling at all! And I oughtta know - the Queen of Ramble!

"I want to be what I was not what I am" is a profound statement I (and I'm sure many others here) absolutely relate to.

We have to learn to become who we are, and like it. Or at least make some peace wiht it. I don't have the answer. Far from it. But I'm glad I'm not alone in this struggle, that's for sure.

PaLady

You're making perfect sense, Becoming. I have a hunch this is what the process "looks like" - or at least sounds like. Trying to make the pieces into a new puzzle, and like the finished product? But the pieces we want aren't all there, and the look on the cover of the box is not the puzzle we pulled off the shelf. Somebody switched things on us!

I hope I'm making sense!

PaLady