Patients and/or Grit

Right now I have an issue and I need to decide whether to be patient or have some grit (grit my teeth and deal with it).  Pain that is.  OK, I know what you are thinking……..”We all have to deal with pain”.  Yep, that is so right.  What I have noticed myself doing is just trying to deal with it on my own.  You guessed it…..It isn’t working and the truth is, I know why.   I have been trying to handle it all on my own.  I can ignore it and it goes away, for a little while, anyway.  But in such a short time it just isn’t bearable.  I finally got it through my head what I am missing here.  I need patience to wait upon the Lord to deal with or heal this thing.  I know I still have to go through all the tests and whatever comes with the Drs.  But there is still a calming effect to my sole since I give it to the Lord.

I know, you are wondering what in the world is going on.  Well, for several months now I have been having these headaches in the back part of my head…below the occipital bone and the back neck bones and across my shoulders hurting.  Well, that pain just got way too much in the last 2 months.  My rheumatologist took ex-rays about a month ago and said that I would probably need therapy and maybe surgery as the spine in that area was no longer aligned.  Of course I said “No Surgery”.  Not until I exhausted every other thing first.   I was sent to KU’s neck and spine, pain management center.  I liked them because they suggested a series of 3 shots even before therapy. (I guess he read my mind that no one is touching my neck with the pain that I have been in).   The nurse set up my three appointments… then I got a call that the pain Dr looked at my ex-rays again and wanted me to have an MRI before starting the shots.  OK, I did make it through the MRI.  But while I was in the cramped tube, I thought of Superman. Remember…..when he was a baby, his parents, who lived on another planet, put him in a tube like thing and sent him into space and he of course landed on the planet Earth.  How did he do it for all those years?  It wasn’t even two hours after I got home from my MRI that I got a call from my Dr’s office, again.  This time they told me that they had already made an appointment for me for the next Friday— to get a Full Body Scan.  The Dr found an “extreme amount of swelling at the base of the cranium”. 

Now comes the patience………..The Full Body Scan was finished around 4:00 on Friday.  I went in at 11:00 am to get the dye injected and told to come back at 2:30 to start the scan.  They said that I would be able to get the results on Monday.   Then, I had all weekend to wait to find out what the results would be.  Well TODAY-Monday I got the results……They were looking for Cancer that they believed was causing the extreme amount of swelling.  The 1^st thing the nurse told me was, “The good news is we did not find Cancer in any of the body.”  Since I knew it was Cancer that they were looking for, it sure made a long 10 days of waiting.  Yes, I was thrilled and felt blessed to hear the good news so now is the long process of them trying to work with the pain that still exists.  Now I wait 9 more days to begin my 1^st in a series of 3 shots that will go into my C-3 vertebrae. I know that life must go on.   I am now only thinking positive thoughts and allowing the Lord to help me deal with the pain as I wait……..Patience Roxie, the Lord is at work here.