I’ve been trying really hard not to complain. Things are tough all over right now.

I’m having problems with my shoulder. Almost 11 months ago I had surgery to remove skin cancer. I had fairly extreme wound dehiscence. If you don’t know what that is (lucky you) it means after a surgery the healing wound site pops open. It was pretty fucking gory and bloody and resulted in a giant, garish, ugly scar. I don’t care that much about it being ugly.

I care that it still hurts. If I lean back on a chair a little too suddenly it hurts. If Noah gently strokes my back and he gets to within an inch of the wound I feel so much pain that my knees turn to jelly. I am not a wimp. I can endure significant pain.

My shoulders have been in bad shape for over 11 years due to nursing all night long with my oldest child and sleeping on my side in a rigid position. But it’s so bad now that I feel pretty constant pain. I miss chiropractic care and massage but with Covid it doesn’t feel like a good idea to be pursuing these sorts of intimate treatments.

Instead I endure. My brain feels cloudy. I know I am more irritable than I would be otherwise. It’s harder dealing with my general feelings of depression.

When I say it hurts I mean lifting a pot of tea to pour a cup hurts. Sometimes there is burning and stabbing pain all the way up and down my arm. Washing dishes is really painful; the pinching movement of holding things as part of the process is nasty.

To give you a bit of perspective… I have finally cracked. House cleaners are going to start coming to the house. That’s a pretty gigantic admission of defeat for me. I need help because I can’t do as much anymore because it hurts too much. I feel really despondent about this. I feel pathetic. I feel sad. I feel weak. I feel like a failure. I literally cannot carry my third child the way I did with my first two. She has to walk. Pushing a stroller is horribly painful. She has to walk. Luckily riding my bike is fairly comfortable because I have worked hard at adjusting the positioning of everything so the only time I really put pressure on my hands is when I am actively braking.

I often wake up with intense, nearly blinding pain in my neck and shoulder. I feel so embarrassed when I take pain medication first thing in the morning. It’s not that anyone in my family judges me. But I didn’t want to grow up and be like my mother.

I think I should probably reach out to the medical staff, dermatologist probably? But with Covid and cancer patients and people with urgent medical problems not being able to access necessary-for-life care I don’t feel at all comfortable raising my hand and asking for help.

So instead I sit in my house and I take the over the counter pain meds and I cry. I don’t feel any hope about ever feeling good in my body again. I am very scared of the degradation that is coming. There is nothing I can do about it. I just get to endure it. I made commitments and I take them very seriously. I will be here as long as I am physically capable of clawing my way through.

It’s going to hurt so very much and I’m scared.