by Anna Grootveld

Created on: May 01, 2008

I have been in pain for over four years. I'm not talking about occasional aches and pains and sore muscles. I'm talking about crippling abdominal pain every single day for over four years. This pain has altered my life. It keeps me from doing normal, every day things that everyone should be capable of doing. I am not able to work. I never know when I am going to be able to control my pain enough to even leave the house. It keeps me awake at night and keeps me in bed in the morning. All this adds strain on my marriage and has caused bouts with depression.

After seeing doctors all over the country and having exploratory surgery and every diagnostic procedure anyone could think of, I still had no answers a year ago. In the months since then, I went to a chiropractor who diagnosed a simple rotated pelvis which had caused a great deal of soft tissue damage over the years, resulting in nerve damage, muscle atrophy, and trigger points throughout my abdomen, pelvic area, and back. The recovery has been slow, unsteady, difficult, and painful.

All this is not meant to sound as though I am complaining or wanting pity. I simply want to share the perspective my thoughts are coming from. I have a vast amount of experience with pain. While we all know that pain has a physiological value, as a physical checks and balances system for the body, to make sure we know when something is wrong with our bodies, there is also a great deal of emotional and philosophical value in the experience of pain when one is willing and able to see it.

My pain has taught me a great deal about endurance and it gives me perspective on life. Suddenly, it's a lot easier to deal with the little things that come up every day that could easily have thrown me for a loop five or six years ago become easier to see for what they really are: insignificant little things that really make very little difference in the long run. My experience of physical pain has given me a high pain tolerance, and it is making me tougher and stronger, both physically and emotionally. My pain gives me both perspective and endurance, which I find incredibly valuable.

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