The Coping, Diving In....

Work through the pain. These words circled my head on my first day back to work after a three month hiatus. Doubts surfaced on my reasoning and logic to return to a daily grind, albeit, a part-time grind. The shift was only five hours, four days a week. I had considered that I had been working full time while finishing my degree and starting our business. This should be no problem. Now I just needed to convince my body of that.

The background noise of pain had become a scream. It reached out from the recesses of my mind and grabbed hold of all my nerve endings. It started in my lower back and raced circles around my body. I tried to isolate it into one place, but each time I thought I had caught it, it darted away to another area. I couldn't trap it and control it this time.

Laying in bed in tears that first night from the pain, I told myself I just needed to give it a week or two, and I would adjust. On my way home from work, I bought two boxes of pain patches, one a pain reliever in it and another, heat. Then the game began, where did I hurt the worst? I focused hard to find the center of each area of pain and slapped a patch on. Maybe I should have bought two more packages.

Ultimately, I knew it was about getting back into life. I had been stagnating, sitting at home day after day. My pain levels were lower, but by mood had worsened. Now, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I wondered if I should tell the new employer that I just couldn't do this.

At what point would I accept my fate? When would I cave in and decide to apply for disability? And am I just kidding myself that I can lead a normal life?