Action Change

These wise words from Bonnie Boots of www.painhealthnews.com:

Last month I unwisely did some yard work that would have been better left to a backhoe and managed to reanimate old back and knee injuries. The last month, then, has been one long battle against that dangerous part of myself that wants to slip into total immobility, swathed in heat packs and soothed with muscle relaxants.

I have a terror of that side of my self. Once before it lured me into letting 2 years of my life slip by.

All of us have that side. Pain, both physical and emotional, is the incantation that conjures it up. Once aroused, it begs us, even orders us to retreat, to cower, to give up and give in.

Consider this news story from March 2008: a 35-year old Kansas woman sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years until he finally called police for help.

Police said the boyfriend claimed the woman had gone into the bathroom, then refused to leave. He brought her food and water and begged her to come out, but she would not. He couldn't explain why he'd waited two years to call for help.

A police spokesman stated they found the woman, clothed in sweat pants and top, seated on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles. She was disoriented and her legs appeared to have atrophied. Because her skin had grown around the toilet seat, the seat had to be taken to the hospital with her, where it was surgically removed.

If you read this story in your newspaper, you may have shaken your head in disbelief or laughed at the incredible circumstances. How can we explain the actions of these two people, the woman and her boyfriend, going on this way, day after day for two years?

I don't believe this couple planned to spend two years of their lives waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I imagine something happened that had her very upset. She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and refused to come out. And an hour passed.

Then another hour passed, and before long the day was gone and evening came. Then it was late at night, and the man and the woman still waited, waited for something to happen. Waited for things to be different.

But the next day, things were still the same, and they were still waiting. Two years, waiting, while the sun rose and set seven hundred and thirty times, for things to change.

Here's one thing we know for sure about this incredible story-things only changed when the boyfriend overcame inertia and took action, when he finally picked up the phone to dial the police and ask for help.

It seems totally weird and incomprehensible. And yet how many of us are living our lives exactly the same way?

We may not be stuck on the toilet seat, but we're stuck on something that holds us back and keeps us from getting on with our lives.

And we're waiting, waiting for something to happen, for something to break the spell of whatever holds us back.

When I first became a pain patient, I was stuck in that strange state of suspended animation. Pain medication robbed me of my normal high energy and made me passive, and I passively waited for someone, some doctor or nurse or therapist, to make things different. I waited for two years.

I know how easy it is to get stuck, like a fly in amber, as days and then years pass and nothing ever changes. So I know this very well-- things only change when we overcome inertia and take action.

When I overcame my inertia, when I stopped waiting for someone else to make a difference in my life, I discovered something amazing. The person I'd been waiting for was me.

I got off the pot, so to speak, and kicked butt. I stopped taking narcotics and got out of the fog. I stopped being polite and passive. I changed doctors. Then I changed doctors again. And then I changed doctors again until I found professionals who could actually help me make progress.

I read everything I could find on pain and healing and I tried, within budget and reason, anything that promised results.

I don't know your story. I don't know what you're stuck on that holds you back. But I do know that if you want something to be different, if you want things to change, if you don't want next week or next month and next year to be just like today, you have to take action.

You have to do something different, talk to someone different, read something different, try something different. Commit yourself to change and change will come.

Takng sustained action will generate a wave of change, a wave that will pick you up and sweep you away from whatever it is you're stuck on, until one day you find yourself standing on a new shore, seeing the sun rise on a new day: a day unlike any you've ever lived. And everything will be different.



Resource: Bonnie Boots
http://www.pain-health-news.com/September-2008.htm