migriane is a bad word

i awoke at 4.19 with a bad one. i can feel them, in my eye and my gut before there's even any real 'pain' to speak of...it's the aura.

the precursor to the pain. like appetizers are the food you eat to make you hungry (™Cartman), these throbby little sensations are the signals i feel to make me scared of the impending pain.

my life is a constant cycle of one pain or the other. Pelvic Nerve Damage, post-surgery on everything abdominal, intestines that don't work right...

and still i hike and treadmill and yoga and swim. i want my body to condition, to strengthen, to feel better. except at this point, and i'm mostly serious, i don't know how much physically stronger i could get. my body is prime, in the shape of my life almost. the muscles that i have built from pushing myself so hard so that i didn't think about the pain anymore because it's all there ever was...the hiking for another hour because i still felt the cramps in my pelvic floor, the crunches even though i wasn't supposed to because i still felt the pain in my pelvic floor...

everything pushing beyond the pain. the internal reasoning being two-fold. 1) if all that i feel is pain on the inside because of this external pain, i'm going to make it a monstrous external pain to match the consuming internal pain, and 2) the stronger my body during all of this ailment, the stronger i'll be to recover, the less the muscle mass will matter as i lie for weeks and weeks.

my psychic and spiritual advisor told me that my recovery would be long, much longer than i expected...but that it would be an encompassing recovery. one of body, mind and spirit, but that my physical would take the longest. that i would ail beyond when i thought that i would. i almost forgot about that, since the morning after my 6.5 hour major abdominal surgeries and organ removals and organ revisions and the rest, i grabbed my morphine drip, stood up and walked to the bathroom when my nurse told me that i couldn't get out of bed. i looked at her like she was the anti-christ, and then i cried on the toilet from the pain.

i dried my tears, went back to bed and told them that i wanted to walk. they said no. so when my surgeon came, i told him that i was going home and that i wanted to walk. he told me after the surgeries i had had, i wasn't going home...i had to walk for a long time, pass gas and poop to go home and it wouldn't happen. i said - i want to walk. i'm going home tonight, i've hiked during chemo, i've worked 80 hour weeks during chemo, i'm a machine...a machine that feels pain, but i'm going home tonight. so, he called the nurse in and said for her to walk me. i held my morphine drip and walked and walked, pushing the button that did little good but walking.

i made them take the drip out and put me on oral meds. i put sweats on. i walked. everyone in the world knew i was waiting for my intestines to work, so they kept asking - pass gas yet?? poop yet?? finally, i passes gas - willing every cell in my body to create that one function.

they brought me down to the sunroom to talk to women who had had lesser surgeries than me and who were still in bed...sad about the state of their reproductive organs, about their fate, refusing to move, to act...choosing instead to lie in bed hooked up to the machines.

they brought me in and said...'this is A, yesteday she had a hysterectomy, appendectomy, double oopherectomy, double salpingectomy, intestinal revision, scar tissue/adhesion removal, kidney stent, bladder revision and abdominal revision.'

everyone's jaw dropped - 'yesterday?' they asked. 'and you're walking today, answering your cell today?' 'but i only had myomectomy last week and i feel so bad', a couple said, still on their morphine drips.

and i said - 'of course you feel bad, i feel like shit. every cell in my body is screaming pain pain pain pain. it hurts, i hurt. i want to curl up in a ball and put the morphine drip back in and watch t.v and go to bed, and they would let me. but i'm not. this is my life, i've been 30 for ten days and i had these surgeries and it hurts but i'm going to live. i'm going to live my life while i live. i eat organic food and i've worked and exercised and kept my body primed through the pain of getting to this moment, and i'm going to live my life now. i'm going home tonight. i'm starting hormone replacement today. i'm going to hurt, but i'm going to do it on my own terms.'

and so i have.

i still hurt. a lot. a lot of the time. which is surprising and hard for me to accept...how slowly the body heals from such trauma, how much i thought the surgery would be a fix it all when right now it is a tool. i know that i will gradually feel better, have a lessening of the other pains, but i'll always have the nerve pain and the migraines from the HRT, so they're a part of my life i have to deal with...i can't ask the sun to stay down while i hurt and am out of pain meds, so the day goes on and so do i. i live, i type, i answer questions from my biological son and find moments to be completely happy depsite or beyond the pain with the people that i love.

living is my only motherfucking option, stopping's not.

and so, i'm sitting here full of abortive medicine for the headache which isn't helping, drinking coffe which isn't helping, all of the things that are supposed to help not helping, with a dog curled up by my feet, the sun coming up over the water, the bluebirds back nesting for their eggs...

and i live.