I have to eat better

Yesterday before and after my doctor's appointment, I wanted to die.  I wanted the elevator to stop and no one to find me.  I wanted to find some water and sink myself in it.  It's not good to tell people you want to die.  They freak out.  But it is a common thought when you have chronic pain.  I've heard countless others say it.  So I might as well write it here.  If you have chronic pain and want to die, you're nowhere near alone.

By the time I had driven to Target to get my refill and sat in my car in the parking lot for a while listening to Ace of Base, I didn't want to actually die.  So I decided I would pseudo-kill myself.  I went home and jammed ice cream, Cheetos, white-chocolate peanut butter, and wine into myself.  It turns out not to be a lethal combination, even at high doses.  Even coupled with chick flicks.

Of course, my food choices were not random.  All of those things (save maybe the Cheetos, but I did eat the whole bag) are bad for my cooch.  Murderously bad.  It was an act of vengeance, all of that food and wine and chick flicks.  A torture.  Don't tell me that I can't torture my cooch without torturing myself.  I mean, of course I can't.  But it's sort of like self-flagellation.  I was whipping the part of me that is awful.

So today at work it's don't-sit-down day.  Don't-eat-wrong day.  Don't-not-pee, don't-not-drink-water, don't-pee-too-often day.  Don't-listen-to-that-Nora-Roberts-book-you-have-checked-out day.

Yesterday, my doctor said I am one of his favorite patients.  Yay!  Because I ask questions and I read about my problems and I do what he says... wait... my mind hopped over to food, the main thing I haven't been doing to improve my pain.  I haven't directly disobeyed him because he doesn't believe how much food influences my pain and so hasn't given me strict dietary orders.

So it makes sense that I went home and tried to kill myself with food.

I have to eat better.  I have no willpower.  I suck.

I have to eat better.

I have to eat better.

Eating better won't cure my pain.  But coffee, sugar, chocolate, wine, alcohol in general, spicy food, acidic food, these are all acts of vengeance every time I engage them.  I can't predict exactly how my body will react, but it's like swallowing a spoonful of some radioactive substance and hoping the atoms don't decay before I poop them out.

I know that self-injury is part of why I don't eat better.  I hate my pain, so I eat as if enough bad food will suffocate it.  I did this in my last relationship, having horribly painful sex as if I were a wolf raising my hair and baring my teeth.  It is all irrational, and I think it's quite normal.  I'm acting out my hatred.  I'm being human.

I know I'm getting better.  When I'm not in a flare from food, the left-side pain is so low as to be invisible.  The right side still flares by itself, and it still packs a gigantic physical and psychological punch.  But I want to be a good patient.  I want to give these nerve blocks the best chance for success.

The nerve block I had in my hip a few weeks ago did nothing for my pain.  Not even my hip pain.  So yesterday, my doctor examined my genitofemoral trigger points again and BAM, down the pain shot from the right trigger point to my vulva.  I'm going back for another right genitofemoral block.  This is the nerve we cryoablated.  It should have died.  It must die.  I will not try to kill it with food.  I will not try to kill it with food.  I will not try to kill it with food...

Work

I know I am getting better.  It clicked in my mind, all the data.  I've told you it all already, but it wasn't until I gathered enough data over a long enough period of time that it clicked in my mind that I am getting better.

But I've been in a pain flare for over a week, and it is hard to keep my head up.

Sometimes I flash from another universe back into this body and I see my pain as if it's new.  It makes me want to sleep.

I thought I was out of the flare over the weekend, but maybe it was that I was standing.  I have been sitting at the office.  I am so tired that I don't want to stand.  But my pain rises and rises, and I think it rises over the course of the week.

I wrote this poem about it while at work.  I go to the bathroom and it is terrifying to pee, but it is also the only place at work I can show that I'm in pain.

Like a lightning bug
I stop my blink
and settle down to bed.
Still the day rolls
and the silence rolls
and there is not a scrap of shadow
to hide in.
I fold
like a moth
with no light to chase
and grip time and time and time
before the unfolding.
It is so bright here
and I am empty,
all white,
I am a starved belly
feeding on gristle
without a body
to hold it.
I settle
into soft ground
as if a weight greater
than my shape
and wish for the plunk
plunk of rain
to help me sleep.
I am a shell, a
beetle,
I cannot believe
how thin my wings
that crumple like tissue
inside me.
I cannot believe
they lift.
I am
an antlion.
I carve my cone
into the sand
and wait and throw
and digest.
That I am so tricky,
so clever,
is my distraction.