Pity Time

Last week I was over an hour late for school. It was not because I slept in, in fact I was up before my 6am alarm. I woke up to my sciatic nerve screaming at me and was unable to move my right leg without an immense amount of pain.
The pain started just over 3 years ago, minimal at first but it got progressively worse. After a few very uncomfortable months I went to see my doctor who sent me for my first of many MRIs. Turns out I have osteoarthritis in my spine, which basically means that the space between my discs is deteriorating. The cushioning between my L3 and L4 discs has completely deteriorated, causing them to constantly rub against each other. The constant bone on bone rubbing caused my disc to herniate, meaning it is bulging out to the right and interacting with the nerves in my back. One nerve in particular, my sciatic nerve, causes me the most grief. If I sit down for a period of time, sometimes an hour sometimes only 10 minutes: my leg will go numb, it feels like a million needles are being poked into my skin. To say that is hurts would be a gross understatement, the pain can be unbearable. The morning last week was one of those times and I will admit that my first thought was to cry and spend the day in bed. After a few minutes of self pity I slowly limped to the living room, grabbed my transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) machine and my pain killers and started to work on making the pain bearable enough to go to school.
I could have given up and stayed in bed all day cursing my feeble spine but I made the decision to get my ass out of bed and quit feeling sorry for myself. I know that my back will not get better, instead it will further degenerate and I may end up in a wheelchair. I could focus on that but instead I choose to believe that advances in medicine will one day be able to rebuild my spine. I believe the moral of this story is, life will always throw you curveballs, it is not "fair" and shit really does happen but it is how you deal with the shit that really matters. It is not easy and I do struggle, almost everyday, but I give myself a little time to throw a pity party then I brush it off, throw on my big girl pants and move forward. Your life will be much more rewarding if you except that it will be hard at times, but it does not last forever and better times will come.