One Of My Little Secrets

Usually I try to write about something regarding the paranormal, ufology or cryptids and my thoughts on the subject, but today, I’ve decided to go in a little bit of a different direction.  Today, I’m getting a little intimate with all of you who read this because last night, I had one of the worst sleeps I’ve had in almost a decade.  Why is this important?  No I didn’t get abducted by aliens.  Nor did I deal with something paranormal or traumatizing.  Nope, this is part of my life long battle that I’ve had since I was a child, so I thought I would fill you in on something personal.

When I was about four or five years old, I used to deal with a lot of pain.  Pain in my joints and muscles that would be unbearable.  I would wake up screaming and crying in the middle of the night, because every muscle and joint in my body would feel like it was seizing up.  It hurt to move.  But it hurt more not to move, and to try and relax.  My parents, God bless them, didn’t know what to do.  They were lost, and felt helpless because there was nothing they could do about any of it.  Nor did they know what the problem was.

It was an aching pain.  One that feels like when you over exert every muscle and joint in your body, and your body gets all achy and sore.  It would get extreme, because as a kid, when you’re out playing, running around, or taking in sports, the pain would be excruciating.  I wanted to do all the normal things as a kid.  I rode my bike everywhere.  I could skate, catch and throw a ball.  I’d run around until all hours until my parents called me inside.  But many times there’d be a price to pay for that endless energy.  That would be a night of screaming and crying because the pain would be back.

Around seven or eight years old, my parents started looking at doctors to try and figure out what was wrong.  My family Doctor would send me to specialist after specialist.  We had everything from extreme growing pains, which was the most common answer, to not enough water.  To just being a boy, who was pushing himself too hard.  But, every time, my mother would take me back to my family doctor, and another specialist would see me in front of them.  One of the final specialists I saw was a doctor who recommended me going for tests at Vancouver’s Children’s Hospital for two weeks when I was 11-years old.  They wanted me to go through physical therapy because one of the issues he had noticed was I had trouble with balance, and believed it could be an equilibrium problem.  He was stunned to learn that I could ride a bike, or skate on blades.  Now I never had the best balance.  In fact, to this day, even though I don’t drink, I’d probably fail a field sobriety test, because I can barely walk a straight line.  I have troubles balancing on one leg without wanting to fall over.

But the specialist thought it could be something more.  So while I was in children’s hospital, I was tested for what they thought could be some sort of hybrid between multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy.  They felt the tiring of my muscles and joints, through the pain I was experiencing, was something they wanted to monitor.  For those two weeks I was a guinea pig for their testing.  Nothing re-created it.  Staying in Children’s Hospital as a kid was scary.  I remember a few days after I left, one of the girls I was in physio therapy with, died at age 13 from cancer.  I don’t remember her name, but I sure remember what she looked like.  There were other stories in there that I remember, but I’ll keep those to myself.  Let’s just say that the doctors and nurses who choose to work in Children’s Hospital are a special type of person, individually.  Seeing kids in pain daily has to wear on a person.  But there they are fighting for every child to get better.  Children’s Hospital shouldn’t exist because children should have to deal with adult problems.  But thank GOD they are there.

While at Children’s Hospital, all of my tests came back negative, including the surgical biopsy they took out of my left shoulder, which I’m still scarred from.  But the pain kept coming.  Baffled, the doctors had no more answers as to what was going on with my body, and I’d likely just have to learn to live with it, with no proper diagnosis to what ‘it’ really was or still is.  As I got older, I started to notice when it would happen.  For instance, if I played a weekend baseball tournament, I knew that if I had three or four games in a day, that night I would be in for hell.  I noticed that elevating my painful arms or especially my legs, to bring the blood out of that area that was causing me pain would help ease the tension.  I knew that if I had access to a hot tub, I’d be in there for hours, to help relax the pain as well.

Knowing when the pain was going to happen helped.  However, last night, caught me right off guard.  I couldn’t move.  And now, as of typing this, my body feels hung over.  Like a night full of drinking, without the consumption of alcohol, yet still paying the price for it.  It sucks.  I feel tired and groggy physically.  Although mentally, I feel great today.  Some may say that it’s because I’m continually pushing myself to hard.  Which could be the case.  But today, I want to crawl back into bed, and sleep the pain away.

This is also a good reminder to all of you that Spaced Out Radio is aligned with one of the greatest charities on this planet, called Chive Charities.  Chive Charities, which can be found on our website, is a great place to donate, because their only goal is to help people and not pocket the money donated like other charity organisations.  Their goals are to help veterans who need help.  Or children with rare diseases.  Every dollar helps, and the efforts of your donations can be seen any time at Chive Charities website.

So yeah. Pain sucks.  But we trudge through, because that’s what we need to do.  No time for pain.  But the body hang over continues.