Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Deeper Hibernation

Wow! What happened to my house?

The same time I got my totally psychosomatic chest muscle pain, John came down with a cold. Right about as he was feeling better and my mindpain started going away, I got the cold. Now John is sniffling, I'm sniffling and last night before bed, poor Remo got the poops - bad.

My poor little house.

But this is it, this is the turnaround. When John gets up at 4:00 in the morning to go take Buddy on an emergency poop walk, it all changes.

Lil guy is okay I think, he's still eating and drinking, so that's the most important thing. But I was supposed to have a private tour this morning, they cancelled and John and I both agreed that it was so I could stay and take care of Buddy and the last of my sniffles.

John's parents were in town this weekend, we eat when they're here. It's really nice. But I'll also tell you it's really nice to get the family when you marry someone. John's family is generally healthy and pretty happy and his mom comes and brings food and strawberries and new clothes and toilet paper and paper towels. And when your own mother is writhing around in her bed talking about how loudly I'm "moaning" upstairs, well...it's nice to have a nice family to take care of us.

John took stellar care of me this weekend. He made me matzo ball soup, a strawberry smoothie, he brought me chocolate and rubbed my temples. He's a really good caretaker that one. Sometimes I feel guilty because caretaking is just not my thing. But I'm thankful for him and try to take care of him as much as I can.

My brother gave me a book: The Mindbody Prescription

It's great, it's all about how this guy thinks most headaches, stomachaches and especially backaches are psychosomatic and not in the bad sense of the word but that your unconscious has so much rage and the id is trying to protect you from all these horrible rages that it pushes them down and that rage has to come out somewhere....

For a long time it was uclers, now it's back pain.

I'm listening. My back has ached off and on ever since I hurt it over a year ago. Sarno explains that the body heals - always, and it's not normal to have lingering pain. He says that people with aches like mine, that it changes, it aches sometimes but all the time and that most people with back pain have it in a few places over their back at the same time. That really goes against it being ONE THING that's causing the pain (pinched nerves, herniations, etc), if it was one of those things, the pain would be regular, wouldn't come and go and would only be in one part of the back.

He talks a lot about fear, how once we hurt ourselves this way we're constantly afraid of hurting it again.

I know this is true for me.

So, I'm still reading this book, but he asks you to kind of list your worries and fears and he's right, there's a lot. And where does all that fear and anger go? NOWHERE?

I feel more powerful thinking about it like this, not being afraid of my back pain and feeling better about there not being anything "wrong" with my back. We'll see how it goes.

Anyhoo, you can see, lots of thinking/planning/worrying/trying not to worry going on here.

But I am ready to be healthy, have my dog and husband healthy and have #sniffles2012 off the books!

What's happening out there?

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