Thursday, August 25, 2005

Pain and Pleasure

Kate, my friend in England, made some remark to me about how the fibromyalgia must be debilitating and I wrote back to tell her I’d been feeling much better lately. I have been, but I never should have said so. That was this morning. This evening, my fibromyalgia is the worse it’s been in months. It is terrible. Everything hurts, and I mean everything. Every ligament in my body and pulled tight. My head hurts, my stomach hurts, my hips, knees ankles hurt. Everything. I feel as if I’ve been run over by a proverbial truck.

When Keith comes home, I tell him I hurt and that he may have to make dinner. He is patient and willing. I ask if he will lie down with me and hold me for a few minutes. His touch usually makes me feel better. I take two Ibuprophens, something I only do in an emergency and we lie down together. He holds me gently, offers to rub my neck and my back. Mostly, I just want him to hold me. I snuggle very close. I am in so much pain I think about dying. If I was in this much pain all the time, I would not want to live. I would not be as stoic as my father was when he was dying, refusing morphine in order to stay lucid and alive. I would die first, I think. I certainly was wishing to die this evening. And I know pain can get much worse, I’ve been worse.

I lay there in Keith’s arms, flipping back and forth between appreciating his loving embrace and wallowing in my pain. I felt truly sick. Deeply sick, something that ravaged my entire being and made me feel less than human. I was also itchy. I often am when I have fibromyalgia “attacks.” So I had to keep rolling painfully away to scratch myself. At one point, despite my pain, which was perhaps letting up just a little due to the Ibuprophen, I poked absentmindedly at Keith’s crotch and commented that there was nothing there. A eunuch. He poked at my breasts, saying he wished they were more accessible. Then, he commented, there’d be something there in his pants to discover. The next thing I knew, he had gotten up to close the bedroom door in case the eleven-year-old came home from his friend’s house. I laughed, thinking of Jo(e)’s recent post on sex on the beach, about attempting to hide adult sex from kids. About my on-going discussion on play with Pam.

Soon, we were busily engaged in wonderful love-making, beautiful slow sensitive love-making. I recalled sex during colds and fevers and flues and other times of illness and accident. I noticed that during the entire slow wonderful process, I was experiencing almost no pain.

Afterwards, Keith said it was survival of the species, species survival being more important than individual survival. I thought wryly that my individual survival was briefly in question, at least in my mind. When the pain returned again, it was not as strong as it had been. I wondered if the difference was the sex or the Ibuprophen, or both. Endorphins are wonderful pain relievers, related to morphine, and made me want to survive for another stolen cuddle. To more than survive, to thrive.

5 comments:

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I do feel better today, not 100% better, but MUCH better than yesterday, knock on wood. The sweet comfort of his arms is a boon. :-)

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you're feeling better, too. I had no idea you suffered from this debilitating condition. I have learned to be grateful for every well moment as well as for my hubby's loving arms.
--se

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thank you, se, for your kind supportive comments. I AM grateful for every well moment and try to appreciate them--and my sweetie's loving arms and touch.

Anonymous said...

If I have a flu and make love to the love of my life, wont I be passing the flu to him? Pardon my being naive (I'm 34 and still a virgin. Thank God! that I have preserved my purity despite of predominat pre-marital sex nowadays, and my species are getting extinct. LOL)

And I'm glad that you are feeling better now, i share the same opinion with peacorpus, it is really comforting if you have someone beside you when you are in pain.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Of course if you make love while you have the flu, there is a great danger of passing on the flu, but if you live intimately with someone, you may well pass it on anyway.

I had fibromyalgia which is not contagious. Or, at least Ithought that's what I had--but the next day, Keith got the flu. SO maybe I had the flu.

Appropriate virginity is a wonderful thing. Since I've been married and had a few children, that would not have worked out very well.

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