Teens in Chronic Pain

When the pain gets this bad, I feel like I’m trapped.

Physically, I’m confined to my couch or bed where I spend as much time as I can until my flare up starts to calm back down. Every movement is calculated and methodical in an effort to reduce the pain. I miss class. I have to take a sick day at work. My frozen peas become my best friend.

Mentally, the pain prevents me from really focusing on homework or tasks at work. My thoughts start to blur and I feel trapped in my current state of mind. I want to be productive and accomplish my set of tasks for the day. Yet, my body won’t let me. The throbbing pain takes over my mind and I feel reduced to a shell of the person I normally am.

Emotionally, I don’t want my friends to see me really hurting so I hide and I feel trapped in my need to isolate myself. I know I can express how I truly feel with my friends, but it can be hard to let them see that side of you. When the pain reaches such a high intensity, you feel vulnerable and very fragile. Your emotions are teetering on the edge and one little blast of wind will cause your emotional wall to come collapsing down. And when it does, you feel like an emotional mess. The hot salty tears come pouring down your face as you gasp for oxygen. You tightly hold on to your pillow for some source of comfort. It’s not a position you want your friends to see you in. It’s painful for you and you think of how awkward it must be for them. So you hide it. You cry when they’re not around. They will hear you complain about the pain, but they won’t see you cry out. And thus, you feel trapped.

Personally, it’s really hard when my pain flares up because I feel trapped in so many ways. Perhaps that is part of the reason why it takes so long for my pain to reach normal levels.

I had to write an appeals letter to my insurance company after they denied my request for a medial meniscus transplant. I asked about seven friends and family members to proofread and edit my letter. Two of my friends said that my letter made them cry. Opening up my heart and trying to capture the pain, the tears, the suffering, the frustration I felt in my letter and then letting my friends read it was scary. What if they didn’t like what I said? Fortunately, they both liked the letter and were able to offer up useful constructive criticism.

I can tell that they have seen a new side of the life of agony that I have lived over the last four years and they were amazed. One of my friends told me about a dream she had where the two of us were jumping up for a tip-off at the start of a basketball game and I could only jump with one leg, yet I easily out jumped her. She said that was a metaphor for how she felt.

When she told me that, I felt like a fraud. Yes, my pain is bad, but there are so many people worse off. I felt like I was taking credit for what God has done in my life. I know that all I have been blessed with comes directly from the grace of God. He took me from a cocky, self-confident, proud student-athlete to a depressed shell of a person to an amazed, humbled, and very blessed girl. I feel like I have grown so much that it amazes me to see how I have matured over the years.

I want God to use me. This pain has been and is and will continue to be awful. But I want something beautiful to come of it. Whether it’s merely my growth as a Christian or inspiring others with a positive attitude or writing a book that encourages people to look to God for strength to overcome the adversity that lies ahead.

“…God blesses you who weep now, for the time will come when you will laugh with joy.” - Luke 6:21 (NLT)

“One of the most important gifts we in the health profession can offer our patients is hope, thereby inspiring in the patient a deep conviction that inner strength can make a difference in the struggle against pain and suffering.” - Dr. Paul Brand

My lowest points over the last seven years have come from moments when I had little to no hope. No hope that I’d be healed. No hope that I could live a life of glory or even a life of meaning. I felt worthless. Helpless. Lonely. Isolated. As I sunk deeper into depression, hope faded away from my mind and heart. I became negative, cranky, and angry with what I had become and then took that out on my friends.

Today, I still struggle with pain on a daily basis, but I’m happy and content with my life. How did a change of that magnitude happen? I believe it’s because I stopped asking God why He allowed this to happen. I started to trust Him and believe that He did, in fact, have a perfect plan for my life. I may never understand why I had to go through what I did, but I have hope that something good will come out of this suffering. I have hope that God will use me to help others. Faith and hope are what keep me going everyday.

I love Hebrews 11, which essentially describes the many people of faith in the Bible and how they faced trials and kept believing God’s promises despite the fact that they never saw his promises come to fruition.

Hebrews 11:1 - “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.”

Hebrews 11:13 - “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did ot receive what was promised, but they saw it from a distance and welcomed it.”

Hebrews 11:35b - “They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.”

I love those verses because they just remind me to keep the faith and believe that the future will be brighter. Whether the future comes tomorrow, a few years from now, or when I’m pain free in heaven.

A guy named Keith Miller once said, “Pain is like a fertilizer. It stinks when you’re around it and you hate it. But after awhile you realize that the despicable stuff provided the nutrients for your growth.” Philip Yancey, author of Where Is God When It Hurts?, asks his readers if we agree with that statement.

I can’t think of anyone (except for those mentally sick people) who actually like pain - it sucks. It takes away your freedom and independence. It crumbles your self confidence and makes you question everything. It can literally stop you in your tracks. It sucks. I’ve been experiencing knee pain since I first hurt it in July of 2000 and have had chronic knee pain since September of 2003. I am certainly not the same person I was when I first hurt my knee. I’m more humble in the fact that I don’t credit myself for my successes anymore (well, at least not as much). I’ve redetermined my priorities and sorted out what’s really important to me. I’ve come to learn to appreciate the small things like getting in the shower with little or no pain.

At first, I lost my ability to run, to dribble, to shoot, to pivot, to sprint, to act like the average person. Then I lost my ability to walk or stand without pain. Now I can’t do it without a brace or pair of crutches. It’s truly humbling to go from being a star athlete who is addicted to sports (I’d spend my summers on my driveway running suicides and shooting hoops and then go run a mile or two around the neighborhood) to struggle to walk from my dorm room to our floor’s bathroom. I would give almost anything to sprint one last time; to feel my arms pumping, my quads and lungs burning, the crowd cheering, the adrenaline of competition, and the glory of competition whether it results in a win, loss, or personal best time. If I could have one thing back, it would be the ability to sprint in the 100m dash - the most beautiful sporting event in the whole wide world…

To put it in perspective, I have the knee of a 60 year old. I’m a 19 year old girl who has arthritic changes in my knee and will need knee surgeries for who knows how long until I have a knee replacement or two in my 40s. And to grasp that new level of activity and come to cope with it, you have to grow as an individual. Otherwise, you’d fail. You’d give up. You’d become depressed. I would never want to go through this again, but I do like the person I am now so much more than the person I was 6 years ago in 8th grade.

“Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory…My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” [Psalm 73:23-24,26]

My only hope is God. I know He’s always there for me and that this trial is developing my character and faith. I believe that everything happens for a reason and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If it wasn’t for God, I would’ve probably given up by now. I find verses that give me hope in the future. Jeremiah 29:11 “I have plans for you. Plans to give you a hope and a future…” I know that the pain I’m experiencing is nothing like he did on the cross and that He understands my pain. One of the pastors at my church has his leg amputated from below the knee and he once had a sermon about making choices. When he had the accident and was in such immense pain, he had to tell himself every morning, “I will choose to be better, not bitter.” And it is so incredibly hard. Pain can be a really discouraging force and it’s easy to be swept up in it as the victim. I’ve been there and I still have my share of bad days.

There’s a guy in the Bible named Job and he had everything taken away from him- his wife and kids, household, and even his own health. Yet he still praised the Lord and was later blessed for his strong faithfulness. Pain takes away a lot of freedom one used to have and I’m really working at keeping my faith strong even through the rough times.

But God gives me a reason to live and try to still excel. I try and look at the bright side. Yes, I’ve seen so many different doctors but I want to go into Pre-med so they are willing to answer any questions or even follow them around. As hard as it can be (and I sure have my bad moments/days), I try and smile and be an encouragement to others. I don’t swear and I hope that just by that and a cheerful attitude, people will wonder why that is. God has just given me so much to be thankful for.

Sure I have awful pain and it hurts in so many ways. But I could be worse. I could be paralyzed or have a terrible disease or even be experiencing great poverty. I have a loving family. My Mom is my best friend and it seems like every night she is encouraging me through the pain. She’ll bring up applicable Bible verses or just remind that there is a reason for all of this.