Acceptance of the Unknown

I had a really bad day of pain. I feel okay right now. I have the effect of my hydrocodone on board and my elbow and wrist warm wraps on. I slept until 2am last night and back to bed about an hour later to actually sleep until 6am. I believe that is the longest that I have slept straight in awhile now. Of course, the morning pain moved on to the afternoon pain. Finally, an hour ago I had to give into hydrocodone again, knowing that I will be completely out tomorrow until my refill on Saturday. I try to move as much as I can while I have the pain relieved. I just do not want to lose muscle mass to this process. I can't help to ponder what it will be like when I am fifty or sixty.

I realize that I have not talked much about who I am or given a timeline of medical issues that bring me to this point. I will spend some time on this post with those topics and periodically through other topics. I couldn't possibly do that in one sitting because of pain issues so I will gradually include those topics in my posts.

Where do I start? Hmmm...I am over forty and a mother of an adult daughter and son. I have been married to my husband for about twenty years. My daughter is from a previous marriage and her father passed away with lung cancer after we were divorced. I am a sister, daughter, aunt, neice, granddaughter, cousin, friend, and a registered nurse. I have worked as a helper in a trophy shop with my father, as a waitress, a manager in two resturants, a dancer in a bar, a cashier in a grocery store, and of course as a nurse. In fact, I have worked at some job since I was a child working with my father in his business. The only time of my life that I have been out of work was when I was pregnant with my daughter until the fifth week postpartum and I had the pleasure of remaining at home with my son for six months. I have never been lazy. I have always been driven to do something. I may have worked in a lot of different jobs when I was younger but I always had a job. I feel my work history helped to create a very diverse registered nurse. I am a good nurse and am very proud of the care that I have provided my patients with over the years.

And now I am out of work. This is the absolute hardest transition that I believe I have ever had to make in my life. Although, I have gradually been able to work less and less over the previous three years. This year I have made 1/3 the amount of money that I made per year full-time as a nurse. I did only work up until the end of September. I just had to stop trying to do something that was destroying me further physically and emotionally. I really could not do it anymore. I decided that it was time to give in to what I had struggled to ignore for the past three years. I pushed as hard as I could push. I ignored the obvious signs of the seriousness of my illnesses and my pain. And here I am ... wondering who am I now.