As people with chronic illness know, medication is a big part of the life we lead. Some are able to embrace needing it to have a better quality of life. Some fight taking medication because they may perceive needing pills as a weakness in themselves. Others may have former substance abuse problems or family members who have had addiction issues and may fear becoming addicted to the medications themselves.
The possibility of addiction is my reason for a three year battle with the prescription medications that I take each day. Both of my parents are alcoholics. They successfully detroyed not only many aspects of their own lives but the childhoods of myself and my two brothers. Being raised in that atmosphere is like a cancer that slowly spreads and leaves behind it scars and dead things.
Because of my past, it was important to me to do things differently as an adult. Not to drink or do drugs and to raise my children with patience and love. To be the best person that I could. And above all, to be coherent and present in every moment of my life and the lives of those I love.
I have had fibromylagia for three years and things are different now. Although I know that taking medication is almost always a choice that we make; when you're ill, injured, in pain or have a disease, the choice becomes more blurry. Taking a heart medication to help with blood pressure is easy. Taking a cholesterol medication to change those numbers seems like simple common sense. Taking insulin for diabetes is just trying to control a disease.
But when your illness or disease is about pain, it's different. We may feel like we should be strong enough to deal with it. When we cannot cope, when we give into the pain by taking medications designed to control or alleviate it, we may feel like we somehow failed. We may feel guilty. But, suffering every moment of every day, as people with fibromyalgia do, tears down resistance, our beliefs and even our fears.
Pain doesn't care about bad childhoods and memories. It doesn't care about our need to be strong and present in the lives of our children. Pain doesn't care about our desire to work and be productive, successful. It doesn't care if we feel weak every time we reach for those orange bottles.
Our medication is about pain. Narcotics, muscle relaxers, anti-depressants that are used to dull the pain sensors in our brains. Our medication makes us less mobile and coherent. It makes us lethargic, floating in and out of a conscious state. We begin to wonder if having less pain is a good enough trade off to truly enjoying our lives and being active within them. Nobody should have to make that choice but we do - everyone with a chronic pain illness must. It is not easy - it's sad to live as a paler version of yourself.
It irks me when i hear of people abuseing the system when its difficult for us to get proper pain meds..I have been in terrible pain and asked a relative for some of there pain pills due to embarrassment about going to the clinic and not wanting to be questioned like a drug seeker..
ReplyDelete