Pain in the Butt - Insight

My previous post explains how I pulled or tore my gluteal muscle and now have a pain in the butt. In that post, I also explore some of the effects this pain in the butt is having on my life.

In this post, I will take one of those effects and explore it for further insight, namely the effect that I've called A Gray Pall. I find that the pain in my butt casts a gray pall over my life and detracts from my enjoyment of normally enjoyable activities.

It is said that the way one does anything is the way one does everything. If you want to know how a person lives his or her life, look at the way he or she does any one activity. In other words, the way I am responding to this pain says a lot about my approach to life.

One way I am responding to this pain is to enjoy life less, largely because of anticipated pain. In my previous post, I described how I find a movie less enjoyable because of the anticipated pain of standing up from my seat and starting to walk after the movie.

It strikes me that this is a question of focus, and focus is a question of choice - as well as of habit formed from many past choices. Essentially, I am choosing where to focus my attention - on future pain rather than on the present movie. Of course, because I have a habit of thinking like this, it seems inevitable to me that anticipated pain would spoil enjoyment of a movie. I don't seem to have any choice about it. But the fact is that anticipated pain spoils the movie because I have chosen many times in the past to let anticipated disaster spoil otherwise pleasurable events, and I have made this a habit. Habits are repeated choices that have become automatic. The automatic quality makes the thought pattern feel inevitable rather than chosen. It is certainly possible to enjoy the movie and to deal with the pain later. It is also possible not to awfulize the pain.

In approaching life, I have often wondered, How on earth is it possible to enjoy life when something horrible can happen at any moment? There was Christopher Reeves, for instance, enjoying a horseback ride - and suddenly he takes a tumble and finds himself completely paralyzed for life. There was my sister Janet preparing for an early morning nurses' meeting - and suddenly she has an excruciating headache that turns out to be an aneurysm that has left her brain-damaged for life. There was Peggy K. taking her twenty-year-old daughter, her only child, Wendy, to have a cast removed from her leg with plans for a celebratory lunch afterwards - and suddenly the doctor emerges from the procedure room to inform Peggy that Wendy has DIED during the cast removal. There am I engaged in a childhood game - and suddenly my father descends upon me in a terrifying rage.

Okay, so I can see where my tendency to anticipate disaster comes from. And I have continued to anticipate disaster to such an extent that it interrupts my enjoyment of life. I have continued to accumulate "proofs" that life cannot be enjoyed because of impending doom - Christopher Reeves, my sister Janet, Peggy K. - and countless others.

Again, it is a question of choosing my focus. Will I focus on an enjoyable airplane ride or on an imagined possible plane crash? Will I focus on the many enjoyable aspects of my teaching position or on an imagined possible job loss? Will I focus on the joys of daily life or on an imagined possible illness or injury or financial disaster?

The plane might crash, so how can I possibly enjoy the plane ride? I might lose my job, so how can I possibly enjoy my work? I might become severely ill, or become paralyzed for life, or become brain damaged, or be sued for something, or be arrested falsely and put in prison, or lose all my money, or become homeless - so how can I possibly enjoy my life?

Because disaster COULD happen, I seem to really believe that enjoyment of life is not possible. What is interesting is that there are people who do enjoy life in the midst of each of the disasters I've mentioned. Christopher Reeves continued his acting profession while completely paralyzed. My sister Janet truly does enjoy life with her family and friends and simply works around her limitations. Peggy K. grieved for her daughter and eventually went on with her life. Roma G., whose fifteen-year-old son committed suicide, has many interests, enjoys life, and has been active in suicide prevention and in support for those whose loved ones have committed suicide.

SO I have a habit of not enjoying life because I focus on an imagined anticipated disaster that can descend at any time. And this is what I'm doing with the pain in my butt - I am not enjoying normally enjoyable activities quite so much because I am focusing on the anticipated pain in my butt.

Pain in the Butt

I have a pain in my butt. Literally. I have pulled and probably torn my gluteal muscle.

Here's how it happened. I decided to get back into yoga and purchased a ten-class pass at a yoga studio. The odd thing about this yoga studio is that even the classes called introductory have turned out to be difficult. Probably these classes are easy for twenty-year-olds but not for sixty-year-olds. That dog pose is NOT easy, and neither is that cute movement of HOPPING from right leg stretch to left leg stretch. To say nothing of the twisty warrior pose and the really awful triangle pose. I actually felt more stressed AFTER some of those "introductory" yoga classes than before!

I kept trying, though, and I did find some gentler classes. And along the way, I seriously over-stretched my muscles. Oddly, I didn't realize I was doing this. I wasn't actually in pain during the yoga poses, but I was exerting myself. I know that you're supposed to avoid exercise that is painful, but I thought that you WERE supposed to exert. Anyway, clearly, I over-exerted.

SO I woke up one morning about a week ago to find that my butt REALLY hurt. Which it still does. My butt hurts when I sit, when I stand, when I walk, and even sometimes when I lie down. It hurts most when I go from lying or sitting to standing. That initial movement of standing and beginning to walk is quite painful.

I can't take those over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as Ibuprofen, as those drugs are contraindicated with the low-dose medication I take for my heart arrythmia. And I most definitely do not want to start a round of doctor visits for this problem. It's a pulled/torn muscle, I got it by over-exercising, and it will heal eventually. Unfortunately, eventually means a couple of months.

Now I'd like to spend a little time exploring how this pain in the butt is affecting me.

A GRAY PALL. I find that this pain in the butt colors my whole life. The color is gray. Things that I would normally enjoy are not so enjoyable because the accompanying pain pulls down the enjoyment level.

For example, let's take the idea of going to a movie at the Prytania Theater, which I love to do - normally. The thought of how it's going to hurt when I stand up from my seat at the end of the movie does detract from my enjoyment of the movie. This seems odd, but it's true. You might think that the movie would distract me from the pain - and part of the time it does - but that anticipation of the coming pain of standing up is there in the background.

What must it be like for people who live with much more serious injuries and pain levels? I think of people undergoing painful physical therapy for an injury. I can now imagine that it must be hard to enjoy the normally enjoyable events of a day because you know that a painful physical therapy session awaits. That anticipation of pain is always there in the background.

And what about people whose pain is constant and high-level? I simply cannot imagine how there could be any enjoyment in life.

I do want to point out, though, that as for myself, my color is gray and not black. The pain in my butt does detract from my enjoyment of life right now, but it does not eliminate it. And we might notice that I am certainly enjoying writing about it!

PULL TO BLACKNESS. Yet I also notice that it is well to be careful not to let a certain undertow take over. It's easy to think, It sure will be nice to be dead, where there is no more pain. Even with my relatively minor pain level, that thought bubbles up. I find, though, that I can acknowledge this thought and turn away from it. I can recognize this as one of my old thought patterns, and I can fairly easily remind myself that this pain level is not overwhelming, the pain is diminishing, the injury is not serious, and the whole thing will eventually heal. I also realize that this is an overly-dramatic thought for my situation.

I can absolutely understand, though, that a person in tremendous constant pain could decide to end the pain by taking his or her life. In fact, I understand that suicide is fairly common among burn victims.

TIREDNESS. I certainly do feel tired more easily. A pain in the butt is an energy-zapper! It's hard to get very excited about an evening activity. After a day at work, I feel ready to hit the sack!

GRUMPINESS. Besides having a pain in the butt, I think I AM somewhat of a pain in the butt. It is even harder than usual to maintain patience in trying circumstances. My store of patience gets exhausted more rapidly.

SYMPATHY. I'll have to admit that I do enjoy sympathetic expressions from others - from friends and from strangers. Yesterday at one of my favorite cafés, a man at the next table noticed that I was having difficulty going from sitting to standing, and asked, "You okay, Bé?" He really was concerned, I recognized him (and probably he me) as a frequenter of that café, and he was exactly the sort of New Orleans man to use the term Bé (or Bébé, or Babe) in a simpatico (to mix languages) way.

BETTER SLEEPING. Believe it or not, this pain in the butt has helped me to sleep more comfortably with my sleep apnea machine! For the last couple of years, I've used been sleeping on my side, since sleeping on the back is not recommended if you have sleep apnea. I've also been finding the machine apparatus somewhat uncomfortable and hard to keep on.

Now, with this pain in the butt, I have to sleep on my back. (Sleeping on either side is more painful.) So, because it's not good to sleep flat on your back with sleep apnea, I've been using lots of pillows to lie on my back but at a higher angle. Lo and behold, suddenly the sleep apnea apparatus is a lot more comfortable, I fall asleep easily, and it stays on. This is a wonderful improvement!

I do have the problem, though, of the pain keeping me awake, but this is diminishing. At first, I go to sleep easily because I have a warm bath just before bed, and this soothes my butt. Eventually, though, I awake in the night to use the bathroom. By then, the soothing effect of the bath has worn off and the effort of moving from lying to standing and then walking aggravates the pain in the butt. When I get back into bed, the pain sometimes keeps me awake, though I do eventually doze off.

Well, that's my pain in the butt story! In my next post, I will explore a particular insight from this pain in the butt experience.

To Avoid Pain or To Embrace Joy

For most of my life, my goal has been to avoid pain. My childhood and adolescence were dominated by avoiding the wrath of my terrifyingly rageful father and worrying about how to avoid the wrath of a God whom I imagined to be even more terrifyingly rageful. I couldn't really envision joy - and I didn't care about it. If I could just avoid pain, that was enough for me.

I have sometimes imagined arriving in heaven, which is supposed to be gorgeous and blissful beyond anything we can imagine, and saying, "Yeah, this is nice, but it certainly isn't worth it. It's not worth the pain I went through on earth to get here. Being so terrified on earth was so painful that it wasn't worth it to go through that terror to get to heaven."

I have been puzzled as to why God would create humans, knowing how much people on earth would suffer and knowing that some people would even suffer for an eternity in hell. If God hadn't created humans, no one would suffer. Of course, no one would experience the joy of heaven, either - but if no one existed, then no one would miss it. A person who does not exist cannot be said to miss something. And it has seemed to me far more important to prevent pain than to provide joy. Having no one around to experience joy seems a small price to pay in order to prevent suffering. If no one existed, then no one would be in bliss, but no one would be in pain, either - and that has seemed good to me.

So eager have I been to prevent suffering, that I have never had a child. I even feel that this is the best thing I have done in my life. When I leave this earth, I will not leave behind anyone on earth who is there because of my efforts. I have given birth to no one. No one will suffer on earth because I inflicted life upon them. That is one thing I have been determined never to do - never to inflict life upon anyone. When I die, I leave no one behind. It is true that my children will not experience joy, but they will not miss the experience of joy because they don't exist. Someone who does not exist cannot be said to miss anything. And since my children don't exist, they will not experience pain, either.

This goal of avoiding pain can actually lead to an attitude of simply waiting to die. One can start to think: It won't be much longer before I can die and get out of here.

Now, what would it be like to abandon the goal of avoiding pain and to embrace joy, instead. Here is what I think it would look like.

• Turning my attention to the good, the gracious, the beautiful, the compassionate, the joyful.
• Savoring those things.
• Noticing what causes my heart to leap with joy.
• Bringing more of those things into my life.
• Expressing thanks.
• Relaxing into a gracious universe.
• Relating to God as Being itself.
• Spending time quietly centered on God within.
  
• Living generously.

Hospital Experience #18: Karen Armstrong - Compassion and Pain

This is the eighteenth in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This eighteenth post will reflect on my hospital experience in relation to what Karen Armstrong says about compassion and pain in her memoir The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, in which she describes her adjustment to life in the world after seven years as a Catholic nun.

In her study of world religions, Karen Armstrong finds that compassion is at the heart of all. Compassionate behavior is expressed in the Golden Rule: Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you. Karen prefers this ancient Jewish expression of the Golden Rule, asking us to refrain from what would cause others pain or discomfort.

How do we know what may cause pain or discomfort to another? Karen Armstrong says that we learn this by observing what causes pain or discomfort to us. Compassion means feeling with another, standing in another's shoes and feeling what it is like to be that person. Karen says that nothing teaches us better how another may feel than our own pain. When something happens that causes us pain, it is well to take careful note and to resolve never to cause such pain to another. This, Karen says, is how pain can be redeemed - by using it to build compassion. Otherwise, pain is wasted.

I found that, in the hospital, I wanted to be treated in a kind, caring, professional, and dignified manner. I experienced pain when Nurse Dreadful did not treat me in these ways. I experienced comfort when other nurses did. I am not a medical professional, so it is not likely that I will be called upon to treat hospital patients in kind, caring, professional, and dignified ways. However, I am a teacher - and my students would certainly appreciate being treated in kind, caring, professional, and dignified ways. They would appreciate seeing that I welcome them, that I am happy to see them, that I have the skills to teach them well, that I take their concerns and questions seriously, that I evaluate their work fairly, that I have time for them, that I am available to them, that I respect them and deeply value their contributions to the class.

I think that it is extremely helpful for professionals of all kinds to be in the position of those they serve - for medical professionals to be patients, for example, and for teachers to be students. This builds compassion. Medical professionals need to know what it feels like to be handled by strangers, and teachers need to know what it feels like to struggle with an unfamiliar subject. Language teachers need to know what it feels like to be confronted with a new language and culture, and writing teachers need to know what it feels like to be confronted with a writing assignment, a deadline, and a blank sheet of paper or computer screen.

These are important lessons from the hospital and from Karen Armstrong - use pain to build compassion, and put yourself in the shoes of those you serve.