Pain & Pretty Pictures

For the past week, my back has been "out".  I have a miserable, sensitive back which likes to plague me with unrelenting pain as much as humanly possible.  I have wicked shoulder and neck pain, mid-back pain, and even lower-back and hip pain.  I can generally cope with this ghastly unfriendliness from my body (which also sees fit to inflict me with daily headache) but can find no logical rhyme nor reason for its despicable behaviour.

Perhaps I am meant to learn some noble lesson from my back pain?  But I have been listening and waiting, and nursing and attending for years now, and I am no closer to the lofty wisdom I am meant to receive.  So I've decided there is no deep meaning in my pain - it's just a black hole at the center of my life which simply IS.

I've grown tired of searching for meaning.  I'm tired of searching for drugs, for practitioners, for sea changes to my personality, for wisdom from books and sages and shamans.  I am tired of massages and acupuncture, and having my chi adjusted.  I have been rolfed and "Grastoned" and actively-released.

I've been shiatsu'd and drank lots of herbs.  I've been detoxed and have deep-breathed and read countless books on Buddhism.  I've read "Eat Pray Love" and "The Greatness Guide" and "The Alchemist" and "Healing your Headaches" and countless other titles meant to enliven my spirit and help me fix myself by finding myself (even when I wasn't lost).

I've meditated and done yoga and had talk therapy and biofeedback. I've taken anxiety drugs and anti-depressants (when I wasn't depressed, just exhausted) and most of the fibromyalgia and nerve pain and migraine drugs you can list.  I've had nerve blocks and muscle freezing.  I even tried "nothing" and stopped catering to myself and sat quietly for months and ignored it. I stopped trying.  I tried stopping.  I did and I didn't do everything and nothing.  I've been acupressured and physiotherapied, if I didn't mention it before.

I have several chiropractors' cell phone numbers and three regular massage therapists.  

Which leaves me at tonight.  My back has been bad since last weekend.  I have extreme pain in my right shoulder and traps and down my right arm and have had three massages this week. I stayed home from work one day (due to accompanying headache) and I've been sleeping with a hot water bottle and a heating pad attached to my body in various positions.  I've been taking muscle relaxants and oh, by the way - trying to get ready for Paris in 8 days.  For God's sake, I do not have time for this!

I can't even surf the net, or write, because it hurts.  

So please feel sorry for me and send me your prayers.  And don't make suggestions about what to try, please.  I have heard them all before, I assure you.  

In the meantime, enjoy these beautiful photos from Country By Mail, a delightful Swedish company which gives me my country fix when I need it.  And made this post seem much prettier than it was!

Isn't this crown precious?  I covet it, even in pain.

I promise more about Paris and London soon - I have so many plans to tell you about.