But You Look So Good!

My dear friend, RR, informed me that while she was enjoying reading my stories, I was once again missing the mark. The main reason for this blog was supposed to be sharing how chronic pain affects my life, and most of my entries don’t have more than a passing reference to it. Of course, she’s absolutely right, and once again my upbringing is hindering my expression of how I feel. Pain? You’re sick? Don’t complain!

I must try to remember there’s a difference between complaining all the time and talking about pain in an effort to help people understand what it’s like to live with an invisible illness like chronic pain.

So what IS it like?

Most people have no comprehension what “chronic pain” means. A frequent scenario goes something like this – you’re in the grocery store, church, wherever, and someone you know stops to chat. The initial greetings of “Hello, how are you?” are made. This is merely a social pleasantry. Most people really do NOT want to know how you are. However, a few may then ask, “Is your pain gone?” or something similar.

After hearing this several times, you’d like to say, “No, the pain is not gone. It’s called CHRONIC pain for a reason. Here’s your sign.” But not wanting to be rude and realizing most people mean well, instead you say something innocuous, like, “No, I still have it.”

Then what happens? They get this incredulous expression and say, “But you look so good!” And you get the distinct impression people think you’re a bit of a hypochondriac, because after all, you can’t hurt very much and still look good.

Lest it be thought I’m being overly sensitive about this, I am by far not the only person with chronic pain to have noticed this phenomenon. In fact, for some time, Rest Ministries, an organization for people in chronic pain, had a logo with “But you look good!” on it.

It’s hard for most people to get a grasp on chronic pain. Everyone has experienced pain, yes, but there’s one problem. The pain was temporary. You had a headache. You took medicine and it went away. You had a toothache. The dentist took care of it. You had labor pain. The baby was born. You had a kidney stone. Excruciating pain! But eventually it passed or was removed. You may have had some pretty bad pain, but even in the midst of it, you knew it was temporary. The pain would end.

You can’t fully understand living with CHRONIC pain until you’ve had pain a long time, until you and the doctors have tried everything imaginable to alleviate it, and until you know it is NOT going away no matter what you do, and you see the rest of your life shimmering before you with the cold hard edges of pain constantly stabbing at you and wearing away your strength. It’s there. It’s always there. And it’s not going away.

There’s a reason people with chronic pain have a higher suicide rate than the average population.

Living with chronic pain is getting up in the morning and wondering what it would be like to wake up without pain, and trying to remember what your life was like before you had pain all the time.

Living with chronic pain means becoming increasingly isolated as pain restricts your activities, and people you thought were friends forget you exist because you can’t stay active in church or work or other activities you once shared. It’s being sad because you know people who enjoy activities you’d love to do, like having their grandchildren for whole days at a time, while you’re lucky to manage a couple of hours.

Living with chronic pain means living a life most people do not understand. They have no experience living with continual pain. They can’t see your pain. It’s all the above and more. But maybe as the days and weeks go by, people reading this blog will get a peek at a different lifestyle and gain some understanding of what life with chronic pain is like.

Because even if I look good, I still hurt.