Fear

ALGOPHOBIA: Fear Of Pain.  Fear is something that I've touched on in other blog entries but have never fully-fleshed out in terms of my meaning.  With endometriosis (or, I would assume, with most chronic illnesses), fear is a very real thing.  

I have dealt with a lot of different fears since even before learning I had endometriosis.  I had the fear of pain from the beginning.  Not paper cut pain but pain that was so pervasive, it makes it so you can't even think right.  Pain that consumes and haunts your entire life.  I had PAIN at the very beginning, before getting proper medications and before having surgery.  The memory of that type of pain is scary.  I do not want to go back there.  I know I have had very few days of pain like that since I have had proper medications, a knowledgeable doctor, and surgery, but I now notice every twinge and in the back of my mind I am hoping that twinge is not signaling the start of pain.

I have fear that is related to my hormone shot.  I am scared of continuing to get it forever because the side effects are pretty scary and I am scared of not getting it often enough.  For instance, if you read my previous post regarding insurance issues, what would probably have been an easy week for me has turned into me watching and worrying about every move I make because my shot is basically coming at least two weeks after I was supposed to get it and in the past I have experienced pain leading up to the shot if I try to go three months.  It also makes me worry about my pain meds because I have been enjoying my slow decrease in pain meds and I've been taking basically the exact amount of pills at exactly the same time every day for the past three weeks, with a couple days being an exception.  Yesterday and today I began to feel differently than I had been... I feel bloated and the one pill I was taking even though I didn't feel like I needed the whole pill last week is not keeping the pain at bay.  It's like getting period cramps if your period hurts a lot and even if you aren't getting a period...

I fear I'll be taking a billion medications every day for the rest of my life.  A billion, of course, being an exaggeration, it's actually more like twenty, but I have to worry about them every time I go somewhere.  Even if I want to walk across the street, I have to know what time it is, how long it will take me to walk there and will anything be wearing off around that time so that I'd have to bring extra meds with me.  It's not really my biggest concern, but it is something I have to think about now whenever I do anything.

I also fear that I will never fully recognize my potential now.  I was excited about coaching.  Now I have no idea if that's something I'll be able to do again.  I like challenging work and I don't even know if I will be holding a full-time job or what it will be.  And I am scared that I might find a job I love and relapse in the midst of it, sending me back to joblessness again.

There are more and I can go there another time, but I don't want to make myself relive everything I could possibly be afraid of at once.  Not good for my zen-like sanity.  I realized long ago that this illness had given me all sorts of new fears, like those I wrote about, and just knowing what they are and thinking about them logically has been helpful to me.  Today I'm trying not to let my fear about breakthrough pain from getting the hormone shot too late consume me, but that's the big one for today.  The others come up at various times, or possibly constantly lurk in the dark recesses of my subconscious.  I found it helpful just to acknowledge they are there and that this disease has taken away a lot of my control.  And I LIKE control.  I like to plan ahead and I do not like needing a great deal of patience.  But things change.  For the most part, I've gotten my head around these fears and I think I deal with each one as it may come and don't let it consume me.  Today, I'm a little consumed with the delayed shot fear, so I thought it might be a good time to share some of those thoughts, as well as voice a few fears that I may not really like to talk about.