Living Proof

Years ago, I suffered from chronic pain. Some doctors called it "degenerative disc disease" while other physicians referred it to "fibromyalgia." They couldn't quite pinpoint what was wrong with me and why I was experiencing such excruciating pain. They admitted me to the hospital for a week to do some testing for autoimmune diseases and other possible diagnoses, to only come up with "myalgia." I guess it's another word for, "We don't know, but we're gonna slap a label on it." During that time, I also developed an ulcer due to all of the NSAIDS (ibuprofen) I was taking to relieve some of the pain. They also gave me Percocet, but it didn't work quite as well as the anti-inflammatories. I had no choice because my stomach would suffer. When I realized I was developing a dependency on the pills, I weaned off and tried smoking weed, which did nothing except make me high and hungry. I never understood why people used it for pain. ...

Ever see one of those posts people plop onto Facebook where it says someone you may know may have an invisible disability of some sort? Most of it is like, anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia or other chronic and sometimes debilitating ailments. As I've written many times before about my dysmenorrhea, I've gotten to the point where I can no longer live with it any longer. These days, it's not only the pain from dysmenorrhea, it triggers my sciatica pain as well. Double whammy. I am not willing to give up 2-3 days of my life per month (which is when the pain is excruciating) in order to nurse this condition or end up in the hospital with Dilaudid -- a medicine ten times stronger than morphine. The main side effect: death from respiratory depression. At that point of pain, you're begging for death. The other night, I watched the clock slip hour by hour as I screamed in pain. 10 o'clock...11 o'clock...1 o'clock...4 o'clock. Madelene finally said, "Let...