I got a disturbing voice mail message from my sister who I have been thinking about a lot recently since I have been in pain. The doctor told me to “stay ahead of the pain” and take the Vicodin on schedule whether I was in pain or not. I did okay on Friday but by early Saturday morning I was not able to keep anything down because the Vicodin had wreaked havoc with my stomach. So by Saturday afternoon I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t “get ahead” of it to save my life. By Sunday I had worked my way through it all and was able to stomach the Vicodin and keep the pain to a minimum, but yesterday and today trying to not take any Vicodin – I have had this throbbing and dull pain that just makes me moan out loud sometimes. <\/p>\n
I thought about S with her RSDS and then she left a voicemail – the message was pretty much incomprehensible as she has been on strong pain medication since the dentist hit her maxillary nerve 4 years ago and RSDS developed. It makes me cringe to hear her because I know her to be a drama queen, and I can’t separate what might actually be real pain and real need for major drugs, from what might now have become an addiction to a low tolerance for any of life’s pain. I liken it to my mother’s rose colored glasses because she can’t fathom the reality of life so she drinks and thinks Polly Anna thoughts. <\/p>\n
My lack of sympathy for this sort of behavior makes me not like myself because going through this foot pain, I should be empathetic at least right now. <\/p>\n
The question hangs in the air – how to sympathize with a person who you don’t trust. How can my mother go take care of 150 drooling geriatrics and I can’t give my own sister the sympathy she might genuinely deserve. This might be where I need to the most work on my self – my ability to be sympathetic to the weak – I tend to freeze up and withdraw from those who exhibit vulnerability around me. <\/p>\n
I guess that is better than lashing out like a snake at the weak – but the recoiling also isn’t pretty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got a disturbing voice mail message from my sister who I have been thinking about a lot recently since I have been in pain. The doctor told me to “stay ahead of the pain” and take the Vicodin on schedule whether I was in pain or not. I did okay on Friday but by early Saturday morning I was not able to keep anything down because the Vicodin had wreaked havoc with my stomach.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-hd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}