#424 What Raiders of the Lost Ark Taught Me About Loving Someone in Chronic Pain

Christmas gift why not want chicken chicken maybe it's not the perfect gift for your family but it is the perfect gift for poor family ninja chicken can break the cycle of poverty for poor family yes chicken chickens and provide nourishment for family and they can sell those exit the market for income when you donate a chicken or any other gospel for Asia. 100% of what you give goes to the field and get the ball went gospel fundraiser to support family and Jesus family this Christmas, give them 66 when see chickens and camping. You as a family here for those who were knowingly, willingly, voluntarily, so will love one you hold what is that look like for you was your headspace in this and these are the things we talk about on this show on how you can navigate to a place of safety and it is is a challenging experience for those of us who are putting themselves in these situations, there is not a solution but there is a path because this even even the solution. I think sometimes people mistakenly think oh well, we'll just get through this and then you know when mama dies and goes will be with Jesus that will be okay and it doesn't really work that way because even after your loved one passes away, the residual impact of you dealing with these things and and facing these challenges last. Sometimes a lifetime for folks I've honestly believe this for some time that the caregiver suffer from a type of PTSD and I don't have a science to prove that it is just my opinion and you take it for what it's worth, but I believe that there's some some real evidence to support that is that it the conditioning present how long you do it if you will do it for a couple months probably not as much when you do it for a decade to decade I'm in my fourth decade and I'm up to 34 years been doing this it it changes the way you look at life in the way you do a lot of things and so anyway that were working on get into that today were also to talk about pain, chronic pain, what is chronic pain due to you as a caregiver, not your pain, your love one's pain we'll talk about that as well.

877-655-6755 877-655-6755 if you want to be a part of the show. Now, if you watch on Facebook live. We would podcast the show as well as put on Facebook love the same time and then we also do a broadcast every Saturday morning live on nearly 200 stations we are we are currently unique show in that regards is that we are pushing and pushing and pushing to get information to fellow caregivers on how to better navigate through this.

What does safety look like for you as as a caregiver but is that look like how you how you deal with it and as a caregiver when you rinse in relation to somebody's in pain all the time and I am my wife had a severe car accident back in 1983 before I ever met her of the time I met her she had 20 surgeries or so and after we got married. They just kept growing.

The surgeries kept growing and to the point now. She said that I can count 80 both of her legs are gone now and she said about 150 smaller procedures and her body orthopedically just a train wreck. So when you live with the kind of pain she lived with her this relentless and it's nonstop my question for myself, and then others who live with this kind of thing is okay what this is due to the caregiver and I've learned a lot about the relationship with someone with chronic pain over these years I studied a lot about it. I've read about it.

I've asked about it helped with the medical professionals about it, and it's not what I thought. It does affect us as caregivers. In fact I go so far as to say that chronic pain is a family issue.

It is a family affliction is not limited to the individual who suffer yes they are bearing the acute part of this Gracie deals with pain on a level that is just mindnumbing to me and she deals with that is her pain. I do not own. Her pain and and I can't take away from her. It's hers. But it does affect the people in her orbit on how she deals with it and and and how it affects the relationships and everything else. In fact I go into basically three areas that chronic pain permeates every single area of a caregivers life of of of the chronic pain sufferer's life and you don't get to engage in a relationship with that individual particular if you're married to them without having to encounter their pain.

I cannot embrace Gracie without embracing her pink and I don't want you to picture this for moment that you're walking on hot gravel, barefoot while carrying a heavy pound of set Creek Drive concrete mix on your shoulder on a hot day. How much patience do you show with people who want to engage you with that point how much tolerance or heart driven conversations are you going to half in those kinds of moments and that's that's a picture of being with somebody who is in pain who's in chronic pain now not talk about periodic pain or episodic pain. I'm talking about, relentless, intractable, it doesn't go away. This is not going to be fixed. So how do you do that.

What does that look like and can you have. Can you forge a marriage and this can you forge a a parental relationship and this can you engage with your parents like this. Can you can you know have friends and and and relatives engage with you in normal relationships that are say to you, yes you can do all those things but it won't listen to be normal. It'll be that there are some workarounds that you're going to have to do is go to have to be some patients, there's gonna have to be some understanding that getting them out of pain is not necessarily an option. Well let me back up.

You can get somebody out of pain it anytime and anyplace. But will he be able to function as a human being. And that's that's the issue that we face. That's the issue we deal with is is okay what what are we doing here where we going with this. And so when it when you look at the permeation of pain and how it spreads out into every relationship that you will have.

If your chronic pain sufferer understand that every relationship you have is going to be touched by this and feel the impact of this doesn't necessarily this, not necessarily a a recipe for gloom and doom, but it's something that I don't think we got we think about a lot and and and understand what it does to us as caregivers and in the goal cannot be just because they're in pain that they get a license to treat you poorly but it also means that you have to be aware of just how difficult their journey is in order to better function with them and then you have to understand that it is conditioning your responses. Particularly if you have children growing up in the chronic pain household is conditioning them.

If you have an addict or alcoholic in the family. You raise children.

Those children are conditioned by that disease, the alcoholism or the addiction. There can be there.

They are conditioned by this they learn to develop responses and and interact and when you have a chronic pain sufferer. Any chronic impairment like that of a particular chronic pain sufferer like this. Guess what it's going to create its own set of rules on engagement. Those rules can be broken.

They can be modified and all that but you have to know what they are and you have to know what it looks like and if you don't then you're going to be playing. It's like playing Frisbee in the dark.

You know every now that he may grab one and be able to swing it but catching it and finding a Mart is going to be a little bit challenging the you feel that way.

Do you feel like sometimes you just you know your you just stabbing around of the dark trying to find where were solid grounders. I know that I have and that you know that you know there's a great illustration of this.

In Indiana Jones and and Raiders of the lost Ark and and if you go back and watch the movie after all the stuff is going on and he's been beat up and everything else and Marion is on the ship with a higher subtype of merchant ship to take the ark through this wherever they're going to and she's helping him take his shirt off and treat his moves and she trusted touch you on one part of his head in his right out of touch that Ed and she trusted touch Whataburger shoulder don't touch that everything is on hurting and finally she just gets exasperated. Where doesn't it hurt any ratios or hurt his elbow and humor seen in the 80 kisses her as she kisses his elbow in the deal goes to different direction. At that point, however, it's that that's an indication of what it's like to be in a relationship someone point. Where does it not hurt and it it it hurts all the time so it's not like it's it's not like one area just hurts it's the body hurts and it hurts constantly. So how do you embrace somebody like what does that look like for you how to youth navigate through that. How do you carveout any kind of intimate relationship.

How do you carve out any kind of romantic relationship through this and these are questions and in hard things that grace you have had to work through you have to learn that that the delicious cheese knuckle to respond in a normal fashion because she hurts all the time.

Her body is just simply broke and our spirits, not our hearts, not an it, but she and she wants to be able to but the body just will not do what she wanted to do or feel the way she wanted to feel and see have to be patient but I think the thing for us as caregivers is learning that headspace of said okay. I didn't do this and I can't undo it and I can't carry it, I can care for them and I can learn to give more sacrificially, but I also have to realize that I'm going to have unmet expectations. I'm going to have my own needs.

I'm going to have my own desires and and I can't look to her as is the the.

If she doesn't if she's not able to respond and what would you get mad you know and and get frustrated, you know, just go for a walk down the street can be very difficult.

Going to a movie. These are things that are hard to do.

Getting a good night sleep on somebody's tossing and turning because they're in so much pain for they can't sleepily get there.

There's hardly anything you can do, run away from the pain and all these things happen in those of you if you don't know anybody with chronic pain.

You're not to really get to know exactly. And so you have to adjust the way you think I your