12/5/12- Chronic pain: Tens of millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain everyday. With chronic pain, signals of pain remain active in the nervous system for weeks, months, or even years. This can take both a physical and emotional toll on a person. The emotional toll of chronic pain also can make pain worse. Anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and fatigue interact in complex ways with chronic pain and may decrease the body's production of natural painkillers; moreover, such negative feelings may increase the level of substances that amplify sensations of pain, causing a vicious cycle of pain for the person. Even the body's most basic defenses may be compromised.

I decided tonight to research chronic pain. I need to educate myself on how to deal with living with a person who suffers from chronic pain. I need to figure out a way to get him to forget about his chronic pain. I am a true believer in "Mind over Matter" and I know that he is too. He is actually the reason why I believe that you can talk yourself into to being sick, you can talk yourself into being hurt, you can talk yourself into anything. Although in his defense, the "Mind over Matter" theory can only last for so long. At some point, based on the research, your mind will take over.

The most difficult part of my research was realizing that there is not alot of suggestions for the family members of those dealing with chronic pain. Maybe I didn't look at it deep enough. My sister suggested therapy. We have tried that, or at least Scott has. Therapy is supposed to help you, not make you feel worse and in my opinion, any good therapist would work on the family as a unit and give every one coping skills while at the same time healing the patient. The therapist that was chosen for us, not by us, has apparantely failed. It's tough when you have people who dictate your needs or should I say, dictate which doctor you can see. I should have spent more time researching therapists, perhaps. That is now at the top of my list. And at this point, I don't care if I have to pay for it myself. After all, that's why I went back to work, to take care of my family.

Scott has lived for 15 months with pain. It never really hit me until I read his Facebook. His post was:     " is sick of living my life in pain!!!Get one issue fixed and another one shows up!!FML".

My heart broke into a million pieces. The worst part was I didn't know he had said that until Erin texted me tonight and asked me what was wrong. I was trying to drive home from work and to be honest, I was doing the mortal sin: I was Facebooking and texting while driving!!

We had an appointment today with the plastic surgeon and I think maybe we were hoping he would say he could fix everything and he basically said no one could fix it. No one can fix the vascular issue. No one can fix the nerve issue and no one can make his "good" leg like it was before. And I just wanna shout at the top of my lungs. Are they serious? They put donor faces on people these days and yet they cannot put a few nerves and veins back together? I don't get it. My biggest struggle is I can't fix this. There is only one thing that I cannot fix and this is it. The fighter in me will fix this. Some way, some how. I lose sleep over it.

I was glad to see so many people support him and try to give words of encouragement. I try to remind myself that everyone has their own problems and their own issues. Several of his Facebook friends are dealing with their own chronic pain issues and offered suggestions. I know for myself, I love (begrudgingly so) to hear of other people's problems. It gives me a few moments to forget about my problems and concentrate on something else.

Some days, I think that no one on this planet has any idea what we go through as a family and then I slap myself upside the head and remember that I am one lucky girl...