Applied

So I applied to U of C on Tuesday...I guess we shall see if I get in.

I also contacted the lab that I would like to do research in, the response:
"We can definitely discuss this on my return to Canada in another week or so."

Promising right? Well, it wasn't a flat out no anyway. If he wanted to say no, he could have done so in a shorter sentence...I think its promising anyway. 

I have also been doing a large amount of physio lately to try and get my IT band back in working order. Let me tell you, my gluts really hurt.

Oops

I am starting to realize that I may have picked the wrong university. If I want to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to regenerate nerves, Guelph is not the right place to be. There is not a single person doing research on this area at the the University of Guelph, last year I never thought that this might be something that I want to do. Really, I hadn't though of it until December 18th...but I am pretty sure this is what I want to do.

I'm not really sure if I should just tough out the next two years and hope I get a graduate position at lab at some other university like Calgary or Toronto where there are people working on this area of research, or if I should try and transfer to say Calgary or Toronto...

I don't know what to do...I haven't signed a lease for next year yet...although people are counting on me to...

I also have friends in Guelph, so if I switch schools I will be starting over and in my 3rd year...But I need to figure this out soon! I want to have the best advantage at getting into the grad school that I need to get into.

What it is like to live in pain -part 2 (the positives)

It has taken me longer than I though it would to write this, but midterms seriously suck! I just finished a week from the underworld...but now its reading week so I can catch up on organic chemistry which I haven't even looked at since I wrote the last post.

With pain comes a lot of crappy stuff, but if I look deep into how it has affected my life, there are some positive things.

1. It has made me a more empathetic person. When I see a picture of somebody with terrible burns, or injuries or a disease all I can think about is how much pain they must be in. Most people's first reaction is the 'ewwww' reaction, when I see the picture it makes me nauseous not because it doesn't look pleasant but because it is like I can almost feel their pain. It makes me want to do nothing but help the person in the picture, to help ease their pain.

2. I have always wanted to be a doctor, from wanting to be a surgeon, to an oncologist, to working with Doctors Without Boarders, but now I want to research peripheral nerve injury and nerve regeneration. Living with pain and nerve trauma has made me realize how badly I don't want anybody to have to go through what I am going through, I want to find a way to regenerate peripheral nerves so that people can be liberated from both disability and pain. I don't think I have ever been more passionate about doing something before. I have even decided what school I want to my MD/Phd at and what school I want to do my masters at and what doctors I want to work under. My own pain has made me realize that as much as I wish I could wake up pain free, I want others to have that chance even more.

3. God. While pain may make me doubt the existence of God sometimes, or make me angry with him, it also brings me closer. Sometimes when the pain is unbearable, God is the only comfort I have. Chronic pain has made me a more spiritual person, even if it also makes me hate God sometimes.

4. I'm disabled. That would for the most part be seen as a negative, except for the fact that it has allowed me to take a step out of the able bodied world and into the world of the disabled. (I hate the word disabled, for we are not 'less' able than anybody else.) I discovered that is not people who are disabled, but it is the world that makes them so. It has changed my whole view on how I see people. I  no longer see somebody in a wheelchair as disabled or somebody with a mental handy cap as less intelligent, I see them as somebody trying to make their way through a world that was designed by and for people with nothing more than a little stress to deal with in their lives.

5. I don't worry as much about the little things anymore, grades are still what I worry about the most, but I don't get all stressed out when I am late for something or when something doesn't go as planned. I know now that life doesn't go according to plan, and just because it doesn't, it doesn't mean that it isn't turning out how it should.

6. I am a lot more willing to let life take me where it wants to, and I have stopped resisting the tide. This is something that I have learned directly through dealing with pain. When you resist pain, it makes it worse, it lasts longer and it feels like you are in a battle for your life. When you let the intense bouts of pain run their course, and just breath through it and think of other things like riding a bike it makes it a lot better. Pain has taught me to stop resisting life's path, and to let life take me where ever it wants to go.

7. I have met people that I would have never met without being in pain. I have met wonderful doctors who have inspired me, and other people dealing with either pain, illnesses or a disability who have showed me that I am ABLE to anything regardless of the obstacles that are put in my way.

8. I actually became a better cyclist. Cycling does cause more pain, but it also helps me deal with the pain. If I have a rough day, or a terrible night, getting on my bike is the only thing that helps. The more you ride, the faster you get, so the more pain am in, the faster I get.

9. Pain has made me a more determined person. When I was in grade 10, I was in my physics class room one lunch hour trying to build a rather tricky circuit. I just couldn't do it. I gave up and kind of flung the half built circuit across the lab bench. I was not aware that my teacher had been observing the whole time, but then he said "That's not like you to give up." I will never forget that moment, because I looked at him, I didn't say anything, and I picked up the circuit and I kept trying. Eventually I got it, and from that day on I have never given up on anything. Chronic pain is probably the biggest challenge of my life, but is just like the circuit. Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel, but I  know that if I don't give up eventually I will overcome the challenge.

10. I don't have a number 10. I can't have a number 10 because my journey through life isn't over yet, in fact, some would say it is just beginning. Having chronic pain has changed me in a lot of ways, many of them bad and many of them good, and it will continue to shape me and my life. I can't have a number 10 because I haven't beaten the pain yet.

What it is like to live in pain -part 1 (the negatives)

This is a post that I should have done a  long time ago, but I have time right now (because o-chem drained my brain from all mental capacity for the day), what is like to have chronic pain when you are 19?

Well, first of all, it seems like nobody in the world understands what is like. My friends joke around that I am 'lucky' to have extra time on exams because of my condition, I would say that you are lucky you don't get extra time. People say things like "I would give anything to have an extra hour for this exam" or "I would trade anything to get an extension on that paper." Would you really if you knew what it was like? You can't truly understand unless you feel it or experience it yourself, and that is something I have learned along the way and come to accept.

I'm going to list the top ten ways in which chronic pain affects my life, this is the only way I know how to tell you what it is like to be me for day.

1. I'm exhausted all the time, and not because I stayed up too late or went out last night kind of exhaustion, but the kind that leaves you in a fog, that makes a pen feel like it weighs 10 lbs. So when people complain that they are tired because they stayed out until the wee hours of the morning or because the only left themselves 8 hours to complete an assignment, it makes me want to show them what it is like to never actually sleep. 3 hours, 4 if I am lucky is all the sleep I get. Imagine trying to sleep when it feels like you leg is being ripped open all the time.

2. I need time to be by myself. No matter how well you know somebody with chronic pain, they will put on a mask to make it seem like everything is okay and that you are just as normal as everybody else. Taking time to just be with myself means that I don't need to fake to the world that I am alright. Usually this time consists of riding my bike, or going for a walk or watching a TV show with a cup of tea. Just me and my thoughts, no school work, no people, no texting.  If you ask me hang out and I say know it is probably a combination of number 1 and the fact I just don't want to have to be a fake.

3. This is a bit of an expansion on number 2, but since this whole pain thing started, I feel like I am faking to the world. You can't show weaknesses to the world because people will think you are unstable and emotional mess. Well, guess what, I am, all the time, but you don't know that because I hide it. If I didn't, you would probably never want to talk to me, or be around me. Who wants to hang out with a person who spontaneously breaks into to tears? If you knew what my leg feels like, you would be impressed that I am not constantly in tears. So if you see me and it looks like I might sort of be crying, or just was crying, its probably because I was/am.

4. Training and racing against people who don't have constant searing pain all the time is difficult. By the time they reach their pain threshold (or what they think is their pain threshold) they are experiencing a much lower level of pain that I was experiencing at the start line. You can only imagine then how much pain I am in by that point.

5. School is not the same for me as it is for somebody who is not in pain. I don't have ADD or ADHD, but I might as well have. I can't focus for more than 15 minutes because the pain is so intense that I need to take a step back from what I am doing and focus on shutting out the pain. So for every 15 minutes of productivity I have 5 minutes of non-productivity. You can imagine what it is like trying to write an exam or study, its physically exhausting after an hour let alone two hours.

6. Drugs. You would assume that I have an arsenal of drugs at my disposal and that if you pay me enough I will give you a shot of Ketamine. Wrong. I only take one drug at the moment and it is called Lamotragen, which was originally created to treat epilepsy. I take a very low dose because any higher and I get a rash that has some pretty serious consequences. That is it. This is also currently my problem. If I go to see a doctor while I am here at school who has no prior knowledge of my life and medical history and only has to go by what I tell them, they won't give me anything stronger that something like Tramacet. Tramacet is about the equivalent of Tylenol 3...not super effective. If I ask for drugs, people assume I am junky. It sucks.

7. Pain affects your relationships because it is not something that you can really control or that other people can really understand. Other than people with chronic pain or who have experienced chronic pain, nobody has the ability to understand what it is like to literally have never ending pain. IT DOESN'T EVER END. Not even when you are asleep. People try to understand this, but they can't, so they pull away from me because that is the only way they know how to cope with it. I would run away too, but the thing is, its really hard to run away from yourself.

8. My future is not predictable, not that anybody's really is, but I can't get the thought out of my mind that I will never be able to become a doctor no matter how hard I try because I will always be dealing with pain. If the surgery works, then great, but the prognosis is not about 50/50. Have you ever had that feeling that no matter how hard you study, you just can't get a good grade? That is the frustration that is my life.

9. It makes me doubt the existence of God. I believe in God, but I don't want to believe in one that does things like this to people. This feeling comes and goes for me, it is very dependent on what has happened in my day. (Discussed further in part 2.)

10. With all the pain, it has  taught me a lot. It has taught me to appreciate the good moments and to understand that bad situations or circumstances usually aren't all that bad.

More to come with part 2, the positives.

I Survived

Hey readers! I just finished my first organic chem midterm, and I don't think I failed! I may have managed to scrape by with an 80 (but that could just be wishful thinking). It wasn't that bad, but I did study pretty hard. I guess I will find out on Monday how I did!!

Welcome to Heart Month

Happy first day of February! February is Heart Month here in the Great North (except S. Ontario is a bit of an exception to the "north" part), which is good for all intensive purposes because it raises awareness about heart disease. This is ironic because we all know that high levels of stress increase your chances for heart disease...my stress levels in February sky rocket because midterms start. Organic Chemistry is this Saturday, and I am scared out of my mind because I might actually fail.

For a lot of people with chronic pain conditions, stress triggers more pain. For me it doesn't really produce more pain, but it definitely decreases my ability to physically and emotionally deal with the pain, so it just feels like the pain is much worse. This makes it more difficult to study, which stresses me out more because I am unprepared for tests ( or I feel I am) and I don't do so well. If I don't do well, I won't get into medical school, and thus my stress levels increase further. See how this positive feedback loop works?

So here is the beginning of a month long stress fest!