that day I paid a woman to throw rice on me

Dear Diary,

Those in chronic pain are well aware of this point, the point at which you find yourself doing and paying for things you never ever ever thought you would consider in your pain-free past. For some it's getting MRIs and taking big-pharma medication, for others it's acupuncture and herbs. For me, having tried both ends of that spectrum, it was paying a woman $250 to chant in Tibetan into rice grains and throw them on my prone body, which is so far down on the new-age end of the spectrum I didn't even know it existed.

(Let me acknowledge my privilege here: I have health insurance and $250 to pay women to throw rice at me in addition to the leg up I have being a white person receiving care within the western medicine complex. Pretty sure being a woman does not help me out though.)

When my TN pain first started (about 11 years ago) it was on the heels of a 6 hour sedated dental procedure which had been on the heels of a wisdom tooth extraction that was particularly gruesome. My hunch is that the novocaine injections of the second procedure re-injured the extraction site, but no one knows for sure. Dentists DO NOT LIKE it when I talk about it. Neurologists are agnostic as to the cause. All I knew was that I woke up out of my Ambien “waking sedation” coma and was immediately in indescribable pain that rendered me a sobbing mess at times and a paralyzed zombie at others. It lasted about 3 months and in that time I saw many types of dental specialists (6!) but X-rays and many many exams revealed nothing diagnosable. It took me 4 years to get a diagnosis and in that time I tried any and everything I could to find relief. At the time I just figured it was a rare and hard to diagnose condition and that all of my care providers did the best they could. I no longer feel that way. More on that later?

So, this point. The point at which you believe in witches, in crystals, in god (actually, I haven’t got there yet), in aromatherapy, in rice. I try not to get too upset about getting to this point, although I’m STILL pretty upset about paying a woman $250 to throw rice at me (if you couldn’t tell). I like to think of this point as the point in the pain when your brain is digging so hard for hope that it unlocks otherwise rigid and calcified hallways in your thinking, and unlocking rigid and calcified hallways in your thinking is always good. It is a searchlight, flooding your brain crevasses with a stark and focused beam of light, looking for hope, and it’s doing that because all else is failing. It is the brain’s last attempt at not giving up. And it does find hope in there, in the idea of magic. And yes, magic can be disappointing, like when rice doesn’t heal you, but it can also be connective and beautiful, like when you are touched by someone like Kenda at Awaken Chiropractic, who makes you feel better for 6 hours and best of all, SEEN. Like when you meet a woman like Elena at Five Seasons Health who’s needles open your body up to itself so that it can do the work of healing faster and stronger than without them. Like when you have massage work done on your body that you never knew could be done by someone like Haley at Strategic Bodywork and even though you haven’t gone back to him because it didn’t help with your TN your husband is a devotee and his body is better for it. These people are a part of my Superhero Team of Care and I am so glad I was open to finding them.

This point is a hard and confusing, disorienting time. Looking for magic is surreal; we spend most of our lives in a pretty solid science-driven reality. Spending the day hoping that rice will heal your nervous system is just….wild, really. But when you get to it, and you will if you are in chronic pain, it can be transcendent and life-changing, which is all we chronic pain-ers are looking for in the first place. So go get rice thrown at your body; maybe it’ll work. If it doesn’t there’s value in knowing that too!

PS Sorry if I offended you by implying that god is as real as the healing power of crystals, both of which I clearly do not believe in. You’re the one reading my diary ;)