So, most of my posts these days seem to be rambles, so why should today be any different? I can’t think of a good reason, can you?

It’s funny how I sat down here to watch Prison Break, and then, while realizing that Hulu was gonna go ahead and take forever to load for some reason, that I had Safari open as well as Flock. And since my Safari bookmarks are different, mostly due to the fact that I HATE SAFARI, I was reminded that I hadn’t posted here since my extended whine about the holiday and sharing some old poetry.

And I sat here, debating about what to write.

This is supposed to be about me and what’s going on in life, but at the same time, I prefer not to give energy to the things that are hurting. Of course, I don’t want to make them grow, by focusing attention on them.

On the other hand, releasing stress by writing about what’s stressing me often makes the problem at hand feel miniscule or lends itself to a solution. So of curse, I’m now torn.

Flipping a mental coin, I’m going to go ahead and rant, but only about The Agony of the Pain I’ve Been In. I want to go scream in a place where no one can hear me, since no one in my offline life seems to want to listen to anything I say.

This issue has become a huge dilemma in my life.

Because I’m a natural drama queen in my every day life, online and off, the fact that I don’t spend every single conversation, meeting, family gathering, date, teleconference, visit to friends, blog post, sales letter, email, tweet, phone call, webinar, teleseminar and instant message complaining about my pain, the people who know me constantly forget this tiny little fact about me that I live with every day of my life.

I am in pain most of the time.

Not sometimes.

Not every third Wednesday.

Not when it’s convenient for me.

Most of the time.

By most, I mean 98% of the time.

By pain, I mean on a scale of 0-10, zero being no pain at all and 10 being “I might pass out if this doesn’t stop”, I’m between 6 and 8 all day, every day, even when I’m sleeping. This level of pain has been going on since late 2006.

But even all the way back to 1993 when I was first diagnosed, I was at about a 4 until I had breast reduction surgery, which took the pressure off my upper back, ruined my figure, and reduced it to a 3 for about a year, when it then went up to a 5.

As you can imagine, I’m none too thrilled with the prospect of having additional surgeries to work this little problem out.

Now, when the pain is a 6 or 7, I can function.

I can get around unassisted or by leaning on walls, or walking with a cane. Of course, if I do any form of manual labor, lift beyond the parameters doctors have set for me, or get carried away exercising, it goes up to an 8 and I have to take about 2 hours off for every 1 hour of stupidity.

During those times, it’s hard for me to sit-up without pain, and there’s no comfortable lying down position. But standing or leaning on a wall doesn’t bother me as much – as long as I can get past the pain it takes to get in one of those two positions.

However, it’s no picnic to walk around, and I get swelling in my hands and feet. When i move my arms and legs, I get spasms in my back in seemingly unpredictable patterns. Nerve damage I’m told, which I think is greek for “we don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you.”

The official diagnosis is spinal degenerative disorder, also known as degenerative disc disease, though there is some argument amongst physicians about whether or not they are the same thing, or if this is even a real disease, or just an easy label for a condition that isn’t understood.

Since being diagnosed, I’ve had no less than four painful-ass spinal herniations, and a jolly-good side of sciatica.

The SDD, ironically, is a disease that almost everyone who lives to be old enough gets. But I’ve been diagnosed as such since 1993, which is unusual, because at the time I was only 21 years old.

And it was severe enough that when first diagnosed I had problems walking and standing and was told that I wouldn’t be able to do so without great pain again. I was told I’d probably be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, not due to non-functionality of my limbs, but due to the fact that it would hurt too much to stand.

To which I merrily said “fuck you,” and managed to find enough holistic aids to get through the day relatively pain free without too many side effects.

Of course, since weed is illegal and I haven’t lived in any medical marijuana state long enough to go through the entire licensing process, I rely mostly on meditation, consuming acetominophen like it was candy, and breathing exercises to manage my daily pain.

I’ll go into the rest of the whole merry-go-round of treatments another day, but suffice it to say for now that the only treatment that works consistently for me and still allows me to work, costs more than the average house payment WITH health insurance, which I do not have. The route of medication is cheaper, but doesn’t work as well.

Though it does give me some relief and shorten my recovery time, the pain meds are much more toxic and more addictive than pot, and have the fun side effect of helping me gain 40 – 60 pounds during a month of treatment, which then worsens my pain again once I’m off the meds.

Not to mention that being tubby causes all types of other problems that are fun for the whole family.

Only I can’t work when I’m on the meds because I’m asleep or mentally cloudy.

And I have to be able to work to pay for the meds or for treatments. Only if I work too hard, I get too sick to work. And if that hard work hasn’t yielded enough money to pay for either treatments or medications beyond my bills, all I can do is lay around until I feel better.

So if a week of trying to work hard enough to be able to afford medication doesn’t yield the amount of money I need to both pay bills and medical costs, then I’m out of work for usually about two weeks trying to recover.

And since the business that was going so well only works when I can be consistent, I had to retire, in order to remove the illusion for my customers that I’d be putting out products at any regular pace, and to officially stop taking consulting clients because I can’t manage the work load.

On top of this, several ideas related to this are slowly making me insane.

The pain itself is bad enough. It’s fucking depressing is what it is.

Think back to the last bad headache you had, or when you last threw your back out or sprained your wrist or ankle. Nothing puts you in a bad mood faster. Now imagine that you had to go through pain twice as bad as that every day, in no predictable fashion. When you get up, you know you’re going to be in pain, but you have no idea if it will be just your back, or if it will cause problems with your arms or legs or how bad it will be.

Imagine that you had to actively fight against a bad mood due to physical pain.

Imagine trying to plan you life with a thing like this hanging over you.

Never being able to say with certainty, “I’ll come visit you for Christmas” or “I’m flying out to Vegas tomorrow” or “I’ll finish writing this book tomorrow”, or any commitment that involves more than talking on the phone.

If the pain wasn’t bad enough in and of itself, the issues that go with it are worse.

I’ve been to so many doctors it would make your head spin. I have tried everything except two things. The first being surgery – too risky at the time I was a prime candidate, and too expensive now that I’m not. Then there’s also the fact that I’ve been told with degenerative disorders it’s really just a patch. I’d have to go through it again at some point. yay.

The other is decompression therapy, which I’ve yet to look into. Why? Because I already have a therapy that works, I just can’t fucking afford it.

That’s why, if you’ve ever spoken to me about your home remedy for my problem, you’ll probably be met by my mis-directed anger, and later an apology, on my worst days. My problem isn’t the fact that I don’t know what to do about it.

A very nice and well meaning doctor has left me a message on my other site, offering his advice. He’s going to be the last doctor I call for a while, whether he can help or not. Because unless he can tell me how to pay for what I already know works, us talking will be a total waste of his time, and a merry go round I don’t want to go on again.

I’m so fucking tired of explaining what’s wrong with me that the very thought makes me wish I knew how to projectile vomit.

It’s the fact that I’m frustrated about HOW to pay for what works on a consistent enough basis to ge through the entire course of physical therapy, so that, I don’t know… I might actually permanently heal?

What brings me to this particularly long angry rant-y ramble today? Being sick and tired of feeling so fucking useless. For a change, my mother not only didn’t ask me to do the impossible, she tricked me into going to bed Christmas night. This was after two days of 3 hours of sleep, and working all day on Christmas and Christmas Eve with my sister, cooking food and making preparations for visitors.

While I slept, she finished the clean up I had started for the whole kitchen, the dining room, the living room, essentially the whole area that was cluttered, messy and filled with the aftermath of cooking and food.

So when I thanked her, and she asked me if I could do the floors, I was more than happy to say yes, especially since that was what I planned to do in the first place, as opposed to the entire house, which I often get stuck with much more often than is my share.

Especially since I’m just visiting and the people who have lived here haven’t been pulling their own weight (besides my youngest sister, who does more than her portion).

Of course during this labor of love I start having spasms. And I started crying. I mean, what the fuck is this – I can’t even sweep and mop the damn floor any more? What is going on with my life?

I couldn’t work a regular job with this ailment which led to me starting this business. Which led to me having no life, so I could get it working right.

Which led me to getting really sick at a time that I really needed to not be sick so my business wouldn’t die.

Which led to the business almost dying when I worked so hard to not let it die, during the aftermath when I was bedridden for almost a year.

Which led to me almost jumping into marriage with the first romance I’d had in a year and a half.

Which led to more overwork, which led to me getting so sick so I had to retire from my favorite and most lucrative part of my business.

Which brings me here, stuck and frustrated.

I just don’t even know what to do anymore.

If I could find the strength and energy, perhaps I could develop a product to mark my retirement, some mega-collection that was somehow different from all the other mega-collections in my field. Then I could get in touch with all the connections I have and do a super promotion.

Only, 1- it took me all day just to write this blog post complaining about how much pain I’m in. Where am I going to come up with the stamina to actually think of, create, and launch a product?

2- I’m truly at the end of my rope right now. It’s an adventure for me to think of how I’m going to get to the bathroom, which is exactly one (1!) door down from here.

Once again, it’s not a case of me not knowing what to do. It’s how in the hell I am I going to pull this off. If you have any suggestions for resources, I’d love to hear them.