Pain is a healthy and natural response. Why do we do everything to avoid feeling it?
My mom died in February of this year. While most people find comfort in her no longer being in pain or suffering (it’s one of the first or only things people say to me when offering their condolences), I’ve found it to be much more layered than that. It should go without saying that I did not feel good or comfortable knowing my mom was as restless and in pain as she was, but my thoughts take me through a much more complex map of wanting to understand the need for pain. Allow me to go back in time a bit in explaining why I might be dealing with the inner conflict and layers to understand.
Since I was very young, I had a fear about my mother’s health. I can’t remember exactly when I became hyper-aware of the risks of cigarette smoke but the smell triggers me to this day. This is putting it lightly. I used to have private fits of rage in my room and even got stomach aches from the smell. As a result of my stomach aches, our family doctor once scolded my mom for smoking and diagnosed me with having an allergy to cigarette smoke. The smell still triggers a rage in me — I feel like the Hulk resides inside and is clawing to get out (this is for another story).
While smoking was my mom’s source of comfort or crutch, food was (is) mine. After I sought help with a nutritionist for my binge-eating, I became increasingly aware of how the foods I ate made me feel, think, and perform. I eventually went on to study holistic nutrition where the seeds of ‘needing to question more’ were planted. My newfound knowledge and curiosity became a double-edged sword. It continues to help me with my own health and well-being but it also fuels any fear or concern for the health of anyone I care about. This remains part of my work-in-progress — letting go of thinking I have any control over another’s journey.
My mom had a lot of trauma in her life. She was the strongest person I know. Many studies and people would say this is correlated. Though for years, I was angry and disappointed in her for smoking, making poor diet choices, not exercising, and denying herself support/help, I’m burgeoning on the understanding that this really was the best she could do. Even our best isn’t necessarily enough to save our lives. Who dictates which life needs to be saved anyway? It certainly wasn’t me, my brother or sister, or anyone else desperately wanting Mom to be here with us for the years or decades we thought we still had with her.
I continue to seek comfort in trusting that there’s a natural order that will always be out of our scope to dissect and understand. Nature will always work towards balance. Our bodies were created with the innate understanding for this balance. Whether it be an ache in the head, stomach, knee, back, or heart that we feel, it’s the body’s way of signalling to us we’re off from a state of equilibrium. Instead of recognizing what is causing the imbalance, it’s easier to numb it with drugs, food, alcohol, sex, phones, and other means of distraction or temporary relief. The majority of us move through life with these numbing agents in place and will not address any of the trauma that our pain stems from. My mom fell in with the majority.
For years and through constant nagging from me, my mom denied herself the care and support her body begged for. Underneath those cravings for cigarettes and sugar, was something much deeper that was far too painful for my mom to face head on.
She was however more skeptical about the over-prescribing and overuse of pharmaceutical drugs and refused to take over-the-counter medications whenever possible. Whether she had a headache or backache, she often felt better after a good night’s rest. Even after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she contemplated her options outside of the standard chemotherapy and radiation. It was after her diagnosis that she quit smoking and focused on supporting her body through natural means. In conjunction with acupuncture and naturopathy, she agreed to try chemotherapy having gone through four rounds before recognizing that it just might kill her before the cancer did. She tried everything she possibly could but any hopes I had of being proactive with her health were over the moment we received her prognosis.
I believe it was hearing the words of having “less than a year” from someone that we’re taught in school and society, to have more of an understanding about our bodies than our own bodies and their innate wisdom do, that ultimately killed her. She was diagnosed on February 22, 2019. She passed on February 6, 2020. The fear of hearing those words crippled any hope and overshadowed all of the tremendous effort she made thereafter. It is my strong opinion that a system that encourages a person (no matter their training or pedestal of power society grants them) to tell another person how long he/she has to live is simply put, wrong…but back to the fundamental need for pain and suffering.
It took a very long time for my mom to allow herself pain medication. She eventually started to take Tylenol Extra Strength which then led to Tylenol 3 but her pain continued to worsen. No matter how much her doctor was offering morphine and reminding her that she didn’t have to endure the kind of pain she was in, she equated taking morphine with the end and her giving up.
In the end, she was intravenously hooked up to morphine which at the push of a button, significantly managed her pain. As she lacked the strength to be able to push the button herself, my sister, brother, and I were all administering her bolus (dose of IV medication) for her. On top of this medication for pain, she was taking a separate one for her restlessness and agitation, a medication for her nausea, and a sedative for times she couldn’t sleep but wanted to. We had to agree to any of the medications and dosages before they were administered to Mom.
It had been so long since it felt like we had our mom. She had been bed-ridden for a couple of months and all she wanted to do was sleep rather than experience the anxiety of how much longer she’d have to be in her state for. It was agonizing for her. It was agonizing for us.
Through it all, I maintained wanting to understand why nature intends us to experience pain. As much pain as we were in, having to watch Mom and miss our mom, there was always an understanding that she was by far, the one suffering the most. For someone who trusts nature over anything man-made, I was torn between wanting Mom to be comfortable while also knowing the main source(s) of her comfort was synthetically-derived.
During those last few days when Mom was begging to live and becoming more paranoid that everyone including the nurses and her children were trying to kill her, it begs to be asked what the ‘right’ thing was to have done. Was this actually Mom who was understanding what she was saying when she asked us to stop all medications and take her home? Was it the cocktail of medications that was causing her paranoia and confusion? By this point, she wouldn’t have been able to stand without the weight of her skeletal frame shattering to the floor. I still find myself tortured by these questions and ‘knowing’ whether we did the right thing by continuing to take her pain away as I am haunted by the memory of her pleading with us that she’s ready to do anything to live.
The pain I feel now is a necessary part of the celebration for Mom’s life. I continue to seek comfort in trusting that there’s a natural order that will always be out of our scope to dissect and understand. Nature will always work towards balance.
