By Barbara Pierce
Two a.m. I walked from the dark night into the bright lights of a hospital’s emergency room. Walked very slowly and cautiously as each step sent a jolt of severe shooting back pain. It had been getting worse over the past few days and I couldn’t tolerate it anymore.
Thankfully there was no one waiting. The nurse took me back to a bed and started an IV.
A few hours later I went home, happily pain free.
But that wasn’t going to last. The pain came back with a vengeance a few days later.
I had identified it as a 10 when I was there before, 10 being the worst pain I’ve ever had. But I was so wrong. Now it was twice as bad. Back to the ER.
This time whatever they gave me worked only partially. Twenty minutes after getting home, the pain was full-on intolerable. I talked with the ER doctor on the phone who told me what to take.
To get to the bottom line, I’ve been dealing with severe pain for a few weeks now. My life is on hold. All I can do is lie in a recliner with an ice pack on my back. My articles are waiting to be written, my life is waiting for me.
This is what happens when you’re aging.
Out of the blue, you go from being just fine to being incapacitated. Life can change in the flicker of an eye. You no longer have the life you had.
Aging means you run head-on into the unexpected. Time and time again.
“Ninety percent of our training is preparing for the unexpected,” said astronaut Butch Wilmore, on the news recently because he and his fellow astronaut were stranded on a space station somewhere out there, way beyond earth. Their year didn’t turn out as they expected. They thought they’d be returning home just eight days after they started. Now it’s next year.
“Sometimes the unexpected goes beyond what you even think could happen,” he continued. “And that’s just the way it goes sometimes because we’re pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do and it’s not easy.”
That’s a pretty good description of aging. The unexpected goes way beyond what you’ve ever imagined. And most of it’s not easy. Nobody trains you to prepare for the unexpected; there are far too many possibilities.
I could go through a long list of my friends and the totally unexpected things they’re facing. One after another has found their life is going in a direction they never would have imagined. If you’re older or you have older friends, you know how that works. And yes, it is depressing to think about. Most of my friends say “I didn’t plan for my life to be like this!”
Here are three lessons I’m learning:
1. Don’t fight the pain. I’ve found my pain is more tolerable if I just accept that it is happening, instead of fighting it to go away or feeling sorry for myself that I’m going through this.
Sometimes, I find Buddhist teachings helpful. Human life is inherently painful, said the Buddha. There is nothing we can do about that, however much we might dislike it. “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional,” he said.
Buddha used the metaphor of a first and second arrow to explain this to his followers. When we feel pain, it’s as if we are hit by an arrow — this hurts, of course. Adding mental pain (aversion, displeasure, depression or self-pity) to physical pain is like being hit by a second arrow. The wise person stops with the first arrow. Simply by calling the pain by its true name, one can keep it from extending beyond the physical and thereby stop it from inflicting deep and penetrating wounds upon the spirit.
Instead of allowing your mind to be dragged down by the pain, simply observe the pain. Accept it.
2. Ask for help: It’s OK to ask for help when you need it. This is difficult for me, but I’m learning.
3. Work out what you can control: Focus on what you can control in the situation. Make a plan; having a plan can help you feel like you’re taking some control of the situation. Do your best to alleviate what is going on with you. Do what you have to do to change the situation.
When you’ve done all you can, do or, if there’s nothing else you can do, then step back and accept this new reality.
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars,” says an old Persian proverb.
“If all you can do is crawl, start crawling,” said 13th century poet Rumi.
Some days are like that when you’re aging.
Barbara Pierce is a retired licensed clinical social worker with many years of experience helping people. If you would like to purchase a copy of her book, “When You Come to the Edge: Aging” or if you have questions for her, contact her at barbarapierce06@yahoo.com.