Mar 15, 2011 by Justin Legg
Well, the big day approaches in less than a week now. Training for the past two weeks has not been the best for me. It has been quite haphazard and I missed the last two big weekend walks. My puppies have been a bit much at times and we have been getting up way too early and staying up too late so things have been thrown off. No big deal, we’ll just walk and walk and keep on walkin’ until all 13.1 miles are done. Suzanne is in pretty good walking shape and like I said in my last post, I can push through the pain if it arises. And I know that at the end of the 13.1 miles the pain will subside, or at least it won’t be as bad. Like I talked about in my last post, the pain will end. And I still believe it will, although that is unfortunately sometimes in death. But, in an interesting twist that this journey has carried me along, I had to be politely reminded of that fact that not all of us get to make choices about that pain.
When I was writing I think I lost sight of a few things and didn’t really address all the issues I should have. I got an e-mail from someone who was slightly hurt and offended by my last post. It was a woman whose daughter suffers from a chronic condition that leaves her in pain constantly. And from what I gather it’s nothing simple like a bruise or a pulled muscle, or even a little neuropathy. Apparently her daughter has been in pain as long as she can remember, she always will be her whole life, and it’s the kind that makes her throw up random meals on a regular basis and need pain medicines just to function well enough to attend school. She doesn’t have a choice to deal with pain. What this young gal has to do every day is what I choose to do some days. I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have that choice. I have gone through times where I was in pain for several months and there was even a stretch for about 2 ½ to 3 years where I was in pain every day. While I was coming back from my bone marrow transplant to get in shape to be a SEAL Platoon Commander I hurt every day. Aside from the problems from chemo, radiation and graft versus host disease, I also have 3 broken vertebrae in my upper back and two ruptured discs in my lower back. They caused pain throughout my body, not to mention the burning skin sensation every time I started to sweat for about 9 months, or the lesions on my tongue and inside my cheeks that never heal. Yes those days sucked. Most days I put the pain aside and did what I had to do, to get myself where I wanted to be. But, I did have a handful of days, especially at night, where I just laid next to my wife, when I couldn’t sleep because I was in so much discomfort… and cried. Yep, big tough Navy SEAL cried to his wife and complained that life wasn’t fair. And Suzanne said that I just had to keep going because quitting wasn’t an option for me. I told her many times that it wasn’t and she reminded me of that during the darkest days. She helped me to stop my whining and suck it up. But she also asked sometimes if I did, in fact, want to quit. She asked if I wanted to stop taking all the pills and stop busting my own ass every day. She said it was my choice. And she was right. She is still right. It was my choice. That is something I left out when I talked about pain.
Sometimes we don’t have a choice when we feel pain or not. There are medicines we can take to deal with pain, but often times they only mitigate the pain, not control it. We don’t choose how intense it is or what it affects. We don’t choose if it hits us while we are driving, sitting in class, trying to be intimate, or exercising. Any way it appears, it’s never the right time or the right place, but what we can choose is how we deal it with. Pain and sickness can take away a lot of things but they can’t take away one’s ability to choose to deal with pain in a dignified manner. This is the point I think I was building to, but failed to make. Maybe I got a little wrapped up in telling everyone how tough I think I am and trying to inspire through being tough. But, in doing so I think I may have oversimplified ideas about enduring and not giving in to pain. I write this blog purporting to teach people a little about what it’s like to deal with chronic disease and how to overcome. But, what good does that do if I inadvertently knock someone’s spirit down a bit in doing so. I am not perfect (don’t let my wife read that – I’ll deny it). I don’t know everything (that too), but one thing that I do know for sure is that we are all learning, no matter where in life we are. I am still learning and should I ever feel like I don’t need to learn anymore, well that is the day that I just unlearned everything I’ve ever been taught. I have all kinds of things to talk about and teach people, but I had to be reminded that I did miss something by the caregiver of someone else in a situation tougher than my own.
Like I talked about in one of my early posts, fighting chronic diseases and pain is like fighting a guerilla war. You give and take and put up your shields when things are rough and fight like hell when you are feeling good. Fighting pain is the same way in that we do what we can, whenever we can, to win. When it feels like it gets too much, we can turn to someone or something we trust in. Some people turn to a spouse or family member, some do yoga, others turn to humor, some hit a punching bag, and sometimes we need to take meds. We use whatever we have at our disposal to win, just like in war. Cheat if you must, but if you find something that gives you an edge when dealing with a deadly opponent, use it to win. Guerilla wars are often fought as revolutions based on ideals. Wars like these often last a long time – with the guerilla side already having it’s mind set on winning no matter what the cost. This is what I have my mind set on and I believe what the young girl fighting her battle every day, whose situation precipitated this post, has her mind on. Life isn’t roses all the time. Sometimes I paint a rosy picture of my plight. I do it for several reasons: I do have a slightly warped view of life, I have a “special” sense of humor, I feel I have a lot of beneficial information to share, I don’t want anyone’s pity, but most of all I want to inspire. I want to inspire others to help find cures for these diseases and I want to inspire those who are afflicted to fight the diseases directly. And for those still fighting, I want to inspire you to fight the pain with dignity. It can’t take away your choice to decide how you want to handle it. I hope by stepping up to apologize to those I may have offended, and admitting that even Navy SEALs who think they are tough, cry when they need to, that I have shown any situation can be handled with dignity. Physical pain is fairly easy for me to deal with, but admitting that I had an emotional situation or two that made me cry, BECAUSE I had to fight the pain every single day; that was a tough one. That’s something that I learned through meeting others dealing with diseases and situations far worse than mine. They dealt with their pain and disability even though they were less physically capable than I was. That taught me humility and it taught me that if any of them could handle their pain with dignity and do what they needed to do, then anyone can handle pain with dignity. As I said last time, “Pain be not be proud!!” Pain cannot take our dignity. And because it cannot do that it becomes powerless. Once powerless - it can be overcome. Pain thou shalt die and the human spirit shall win.
P.S. Anyone that is thinking of making a joke about me crying, remember that the government did spend millions of dollars to ensure I can track down the worst men on the planet, anytime, anywhere, in any environment, and kill them ... and still remember to bring back chocolate and bunnies for my nieces!!
See you at the finish line - your friendly, huggable Navy SEAL.