Some of my friends know that I have been dealing with “body-wide pain” over the last couple months. The medications that I have been prescribed are not what I need. Believe it or not, they are too powerful and of the wrong class/type. There will be future posts on this topic.
We have been experiencing moderate temperatures here in Middle-Tennessee the last few weeks, so we decided to open up the windows and “air the house out”. Opening up the windows also has the nice effect of allowing you to turn the AC unit off (save a little on the electric bill). These moderate temperatures have also brought along lots rain and thunderstorms almost daily (humid…damp conditions). To borrow a quote from an old 80’s band to describe the level of pain I have been experiencing, “This pain goes to eleven.” Effectively I had run out of options for any relief…short of taking enough of the medications to keep myself sedated constantly. That is not living…and that is not how I want to spend my time.
{Squirrel} We (several doctors, my wife and myself) are all coming to the same conclusion…I am getting old (do not laugh Runt) and developing arthritis. I am trying to get a referral to a rheumatologist to confirm this theory and hopefully find a treatment satisfactory to all involved parties.{/Squirrel}
So, I am at the point of utter frustration. I am getting zero relief from the pain medications, heating pad, laying down, sitting up…nothing is working. Heather was laying by my side in our bedroom…praying for answers, solutions, any kind of help for her husband…and then…the answer blew in through the windows. It is damp outside…it is damp inside.
Arthritis you say? A condition typically agitated by the exact weather conditions I just described. Close the windows! Change the atmosphere.
So, I asked Heather if she would close up the windows and turn the AC unit back on in an effort to “dry out the air” inside the house. The results were absolutely amazing. Obviously, my ears allowed me to hear Heather closing all of the windows and then the eventual airflow through the duct work…but my body was also talking to me. The initial result was not relief as you might think…but an absolute opposite effect…the pain became even more intense…an increased ache in my legs, back and chest that persisted over a three to five minute period. I can only describe those three to five minutes as a period of rapid adjustment to the abrupt atmospheric change. My body had just received a gigantic bolus of “good atmosphere”…it just could not process the changes fast enough.
As the air continued to dry out and my body acclimated itself to the atmosphere it knows and loves…the pain slowly dropped back to a point of tolerance. A point where the medications were at least somewhat functional and I was not at the point of crying from pain, frustration, and lack of control. This entire transition took less than thirty minutes to complete.
Now I am asking myself, how many times do I (we) have to experience the same situation? Why must I (we) be so hard-headed? It’s quite simple…control is an illusion. We do not have it…and never have. But we continue to act as if we can fix that which is broken by ourselves. That trouble, pain and such…bring those burdens to the feet of our Savior instead. Pray that He would take those burdens from us and grant relief from the ills of this world. Pray for strength, wisdom, and knowledge…the “answer” to the problem(s). And then just “listen”…He heard you. Sometimes the answers are presented in a subtle manner…sometimes they blow in through the windows like the March winds. Always be sure to give thanks to our Lord for his blessings (all of them…great and small). I know that not all of our prayers are answered so quickly like my testimony above…but we have to remember that God’s time is not our time.
May God Bless You All… Amen.
