And then I started finding out that my experience - having to leave work, finding myself isolated and lonely, finding myself depressed, finding myself unable to cope with my family and domestic responsibilities, etc. I did start doing a little bit more research and found that there are 50 to 75 million other people in America living with debilitating, chronic pain - which is defined as pain that goes on longer than six months continuously. I suddenly had the sense of, “I don’t have a monopoly on pain or on hardship or on family problems or on life-changing incidents.” All of a sudden I felt like my issues were small potatoes compared to the rest of them. That was the first eye-opener “Oh, there are other people like me and, wow, they even have it worse than I do.” Most of them have it worse, and for all kinds of different reasons. It was only after starting to write the book and being at the … well, being at the hospital first, all of a sudden I was around 60 or so other people with the same problem. I thought I was the only one, right? How could someone else be going through this? And it felt like a very lonely, isolating and dispiriting experience from the rest of the world. I wasn’t working and I couldn’t read and I certainly couldn’t go on my computer, let alone Google something like “pain” or “neck pain.” I had an overriding sense of my uniqueness and isolation.
After a year and a half of being in bed and having my nearest and dearest family and friends around me - and that was sort of it - I felt very cut off from the outside world. I was stunned at the number of people who suffer from it.
0 kommentar(er)
