Oh, hi everyone. Yeah, my hair is hanging in my face. I haven’t had a haircut in a while and I could use one. I’m torn between doing a review of this book, which is absolutely fantastic, and talking about this book, I just am breezing through the first part because I’m realizing now that I know everything it has to say in the first part. Okay?
I have been a patient, a neurology patient for well over a decade. It’s been, how long has it been since I got dystonia? It has been literally 20 years since I first developed dystonia after a stroke. And well, to say that I’m familiar with pain is understating matters. So common pain thoughts and how I’m supposed to adjust myself. Well, gee, let’s see here. Bad thoughts. “I tried doing exercises for my back pain before and it didn’t help, so it isn’t going to help.”
Now, helpful thought, “Although physical therapy didn’t help much before, maybe this time it will help. I might as well try.” Gee, that was the exact thought I had before I went to my recent therapist. Okay, it didn’t work before. Maybe they’ve gotten better. Maybe there has been improvement. Maybe there’s hope, and I found someone who gave me hope. Hope helps. Sometimes it’s a lot nicer than saying, “You’ve had nerve damage. What do you expect?” Or, “I’m sorry, we can’t do a thing for you,” which are things I have also heard from medical professionals. Really? “You’ve had nerve damage. Did you think this would just be fixed?”
Okay, yeah, thank you for that. Also, “I feel useless, so I am useless.” I have never thought that. Even though, here’s the good thought. “Even though I can’t do all the things I used to do, it doesn’t mean I can’t do anything.” A very helpful thought, and I’m always thinking it. What am I capable of? What can my mind and body bear in this condition? I am always aware of what I can bear at any given moment. At the moment, right now, my hand is clenching unbearably in my lap on top of this book that’s in my lap, and I’m trying very hard to maintain a pleasant expression about it. So sometimes life just gives you situations you have no control over. And one of those things is my book sales. And boy, I learned a tough lesson with Amazon in so many ways. I learned a tough lesson with them. When you become addicted to looking at your Amazon rank, you’re in trouble. You’re on the road to burnout. You really are. And let me tell you, as a person who is already struggling to make a coherent message out of this, I’m begging people do not become Amazon exclusive. Do not support this company. Buy anywhere else.
Amazon was my downfall. I mean, they gave us all a wonderful opportunity to make a difference, and we did. And now, well, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m rambling a bit. See, that’s what happens when you’re in pain. You tend to not focus as well as you could. But anyway, I won’t go through all the things that he says that I have already done so many times. Oh, yes, that’s right. Hurt does not equal damage. What was that? Where is that in there? That’s a great one. I like that one because I wanted to say, yeah, hurt. Here it is.
“Hurt does not equal harm.” Hurt does not equal harm. In other words, even though you’re in pain, you might be physically fine. Your body is otherwise fine. I shudder to think of the damage that’s going on in my joints right now. I’m not doing this deliberately. These are the muscles fighting each other. Okay? Now, having said that, okay, I could go around holding my hand like this all the time, looking like I’m congratulating myself or something, but that would be ridiculous. So I simply have to do what I can to try to relax that hand, which is almost impossible because look up the word involuntary, involuntary movement. It’s all involuntary. Now, it can be affected by my mood, the weather, I suppose. I don’t know, lots of things. What I eat, the amount of sleep I get. But the bottom line is it’s up to me to try to figure out how to cope with it, and it tends to make one feel very alone. So I think the best thing about this book is that it explains to people fairly well through storytelling what it’s like to have that before and after feeling, because my life divides that way. Let’s face it, there is before the stroke and dystonia that followed and there’s after the stroke and the dystonia that follows and will not leave and will not leave me alone. There, I said it.
This is really a fantastic book. I can always tell a fantastic book because my hand will be clenching madly toward the end of it because it’s so exciting. Anyway, I’ll do a better review of this book later because it really deserves it. Take care, and I will talk to you soon, and this is a good book too, but I’m going to skip right to the part about what is this here? Taking charge of a pain smart life, “Taking Charge for a Pain-Smart Life”. That’s Part Two. Can’t wait to read it. It’s addictive reading. For those of us in pain. Thank you, and talk to you later.