Stepping away a little from Chih-I I’m going to share with you a little insight I have gained only in the past two days.
I returned from a trip to Alabama to visit an important museum and memorial dedicated to the cruelty and injustice that has been inflicted on Africans and blacks in our country. I won’t go into the details as that is material for a different writing.
As I have shared in this writing it has been discovered that I have a fractured vertebrae in my cervical column, as well as arthritis in other surrounding vertebrae. The pain symptoms began in November and continue. I am currently waiting to get an MRI through the VA which moves at an incredibly and frustratingly slow pace. The MRI was scheduled a month ago.
Recently the pain has increased and has moved into my head manifesting as pains and headache. The pain in my shoulder is increasing as well as sharp stabbing pains all down my arm. It is difficult to breath because the pain triggers in my chest muscles. Over the past three days the pain has really intensified. Now some of it may be related to the pace of my travel schedule, and so I am hoping that with some rest it may subside some.
While on my trip, and especially during a meal with a long time friend while I was on layover in Charlotte, I noticed that it was difficult sometimes to remember things. Upon returning to the airport it dawned on me that the pain was interrupting my thinking process. I would have a thought or an idea and the pain would spike and it would distract my thoughts and then it was difficult to return to what I was thinking about.
I’ve worked with many patients who are in severe pain. In all of my experience I’ve never heard anyone speak about how pain interrupts thinking, holding onto a train of thought, remembering things, or such. In all the reading I’ve done on pain I’ve never read anything about it. That isn’t to say nothing has been written, but that if I haven’t heard or read about it then I am guessing that if others experience it they may not be aware or if they are they may not know to say it. It is curious and leaves me wondering how this impacts the ability of a patient to express their needs and the care provider to give appropriate relief.
When I experience severe pain I try to modulate my breathing and focus my mind on cessation of pain and it’s affect in my body. That too pulls me away from previous thoughts, so the relief is also an interruption in thinking, maintaining an idea, remembering, and functioning. I’m going to try to be more attentive to this phenomena and my awareness of what goes on within the environment of my body while in pain.
Next up in Chih-I’s writing about cessation is number five, Knowing What Penetrates and What Obstructs.
Using the tools of the Four Noble Truths, the Twelve-Link Chain of Causation, and the Six Perfections we are instructed to examine the methods of treatment, their affect, their efficacy, what they help and what is hindered.
To a certain extent the awareness I shard above about how pain interrupts and how the method of pain cessation also interrupts is perhaps a beginning to being able to look at the whole picture rather than isolated parts of the picture. Pain has an impact and the cessation of pain also has an impact. The cessation is important to maintain, and especially important to be aware of is how both interact and manifest within the context of total health.
The fact that the travel may have contributed to the increase in pain can not be ignored, to do so would be to abandon dependent origination. The awakening of realization of pain and thinking processes reminds me that there is suffering, there is pain, it has a cause and there are ways to mitigate or change the cause and to employ skillful ways to do so. Notice the Four Noble truth first acknowledge the effect we experience and then only focus on causes; there is a cause, there is a way to change the cause thereby affect a different experience, and there are tools to employ to make the change.
Beyond the initial admission of suffering, the affects of suffering, every thing else looks to causes to impact the experiences of our lives. On the one hand we look at our lives and then turn away from the potential to wallow in self pity and move towards making significant changes to begin to experience a new way of being based upon a new way of living.
In my situation there is pain, and I’ll be honest I am sometimes suffering due to the pain. When I find that I am suffering I remind myself that it is a choice and the result of actions, even if only mental actions. When I can return to simply the pain I have found that I am better able to look at how to manage the pain, and most recently some of the impacts of that pain on my life. The new awareness has encouraged me to think about strategies for remembering differently perhaps using more reminder prompts, being more diligent about making notes, and being more attentive to not simply abandoning my thoughts the moment the pain arrises, but to enter more gradually into the pain.
This process is still new, so you are being invited into an adventure along with me. I find this very exciting actually if truth be told.
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