Author: Jennifer Kain Kilgore

I Make Pain Look Good.

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Take a look at this person. Take a real good look. Then ask yourself: Is this person in pain? She looks fine, you think. She doesn’t have a handicap placard on her car. She doesn’t walk with a cane. She isn’t wearing a brace.  You furrow your eyebrows, and then you think: She looks totally normal.  The thing is that when this picture was taken, she was in a world of pain. She had three sort-of healed spinal fractures and a calcified nerve cluster. Even though she was smiling under the artful disguise of Microsoft Paint, she was hurting. She was wearing a back brace under that dress. She changed into flats as soon as that picture was taken. She found a place to sit down and close her eyes, trying to match her inhales and exhales to the thud-thud-thudding of her spasming muscles. She had her special dichroic glass pill case in her handbag filled with Tramadol, Nabumetone, and Vicodin. She had already calculated how long she could stand being upright and the time it would take to get back to …

Word War Won: “Victim” vs. “Survivor” vs. “Thriver”

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I was going to talk about different words during this edition, but Alexis got me thinking. We had a very uncomfortable session the other day during which she asked me how things are going now that I’ve cut out sugar and alcohol. It started last week when we had a Skype session and she saw my face. She said I needed to do a detox. Immediately. I felt slow and inflamed, my brain was foggy, and even my face looked puffy. I’d gone to a small law school reunion/memorial for my friend Andy and saw surprise on my classmates’ faces; the last time they saw me was thirty pounds ago. (Granted, some of that weight gain was necessary at the time since I was an anthropomorphic coat hanger, but do you know how hard it was just now to type “thirty pounds ago”?) My pain was worsening. I’d been gaining weight despite exercising every day, thanks to my medication increasing my appetite to that of a starving boat wreck survivor. I’d binge in the evenings after work, thinking I deserve this as I snatched …

Embracing Pain with Mindfulness

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Is it better to ignore pain or embrace it? I thought for the longest time that by meeting my pain head-on, I was doing myself a good service. And it’s true; ignoring pain can be emotionally and mentally taxing. If I embraced the pain, I would be able to discover the edges of it. Then I could encase it in a box within my mind, if that makes any sense. I’d be able to get outside of my own head. Surely this was better than ignoring how I felt? Better than pressing onward despite feeling like a train was chug-a-chug-a-chugging along my spinal column? After the first accident, I thought that I’d felt the worst pain I could ever feel. After the second accident, naturally, I realized that the pain can get worse. The pain can always get worse. And where before I could feel the edges of it, after the second accident I was burning inside, burning outside, just burning. I tried to face it; instead, I was directed by it. If I turned too quickly and felt …

Word War Won: “Injured vs. Crippled”

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This is the first of a weekly edition called “Word War Won,” which somehow hasn’t been used before in the entirety of the Internet, so I’m feeling fairly clever. Anyway, this weekly post will focus on the words used by chronic pain and illness patients, the words that reflect our warped self-perception. We define ourselves in such terrible ways. We treat ourselves like we would never treat another person; we say cruel things and we belittle our progress. The things I’ve said in my head to my hard-working body are things I would never say to Husband or my friends. I want to do what I can to drag this very private issue out into the sunlight. Our bodies are doing the best they can at any given moment. Each and every day upon waking up, we forget that our bodies have been working hard all night to keep us alive and breathing. Even if we feel like they constantly fail, they are trying so very hard… and yet we tear ourselves down and say that we are broken, that we are useless, and that we are burdens on those …

Small Hurt Versus Big Hurt

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I am typing this with nine fingers because I lost a fight with a stick blender today. Why is it that small injuries seem to hurt worse than large ones? I sliced my left index finger in a way that (probably) does not necessitate stitches. I had to take pain killers and vodka — not at the same time — and ice it. It’s still throbbing. … Thrrrrrrooooooobbbbbbbing. Immediate pain seems to envelop the mind in a way that chronic pain can’t, since chronic pain is something that one comes to live with and therefore ignores. You adjust as necessary. Your back and neck hurt on a daily basis? Change the way you sit so that you don’t aggravate it. Don’t do too much, keep an eye on it, don’t move your head too quickly, and don’t go pole-vaulting. You cut your finger? DISTRACTION NEEDED. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD, THIS HURTS. On the plus side, this is distracting me from my normal pain! So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Let’s Talk About Wabi Sabi, Kintsugi, and Invisible Illness

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I finally caught up with a couple fragments of thought for this edition of Wear, Tear, & Care. For weeks now I’ve been pondering two Japanese concepts: Wabi-Sabi and Kintsugi. Wabi-Sabi: “the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection“. Kintsugi: the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. These two Japanese practices can easily parallel the difficulties that arise when discussing self-acceptance of invisible illness. More often than not, I find myself saying that because I am not perfect — because I am not a fully-functioning human being, much less a movie-star-like specimen — that I am not worthy or deserving of… what, love? Life? Half the time I don’t even know. The most constant sense I have is that if I am a less-than-able person, then I am undeserving of happiness. That I won’t be happy unless I am whole. Then I started really thinking about these Japanese practices. With Wabi-Sabi, in terms of how something imperfect can still be beautiful — this is something that I feel like every child is taught in grade school. Even though we’re all …

Debbie Downer Gets Some Puppy Uppers

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The title of this post shouldn’t suggest that I’m on (additional) antidepressants. As much as I love me some puppy uppers, I had a bit of an epiphany this past week at my most recent session with Alexis, my shrink/nutritionist. First of all, the word “chronic,” as in “chronic pain.” Alexis has yelled at me for using the word “crippled” instead of “injured.” I’m having the same issue now with “chronic.” Chronic is a synonym for stagnant, continuous, endless. That word needs to be deleted from my lexicon. Even if this healing process does seem stagnant, continuous, and endless, it is moving forward because my body is constantly changing. I gain weight, lose weight, get a gray hair (ohmyGodthatfinallyhappenedlastweek), pull the gray hair out, get a bruise, lose a bruise. My body is not in stasis. It is changing. I am changing. I will continue to change. Secondly, my pain has affected the way I react to the world and how the world reacts to me. I hide inside of it because I’m afraid to go outside half the …

The Inconvenient Youth: On Being Young and Chronically Ill

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Originally posted on mary caroline:
Getting sick when you’re young is unexpected. It certainly came as a surprise to me. But I got used to it, I had to. It’s been years so I’ve adjusted. The rest of the world, I realize, is not prepared for a young sick person. Using a cane made my so-called “invisible illnesses” visible, and this changed everything. It’s still one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. So many things became accessible again all because of a mobility aid. But there are always pros and cons, and using a mobility aid is no exception to this rule. It didn’t take me long to get used to people staring.  My first summer using a cane my aunt Sharon asked, “Is this really what people are like?” and I hadn’t even noticed that day. To me it didn’t seem that bad. After all, staring is a small offense on the spectrum of daily disruptions. People feel entitled to my medical information. I rarely go somewhere alone without being approached and asked about my cane. To…