One morning in May, May 6th to be exact, I woke up in the middle of the night in such pain I thought that possibly I had been shot. My body felt warm and wet and I hurt all over. I tried to get up, but couldn’t lift my head off the pillow. Come to think of it, I couldn’t move much. I tried with all my might to lift my head but it wouldn’t move. It was like the signals from my brain were not getting to my head and nothing moved. The pain was excruciating and I laid there, alone, and started to cry. What was happening, how was I going to get up, how was I going to get the kids ready for school or get myself to work. I realized as I felt the pain shooting up into my head that maybe I was having an aneurism. Maybe this was it. I started to think of all the things I was going to miss. My children would get up for school and find me in bed and the thought of that nearly killed me. This is not how it was going to go down. I was not going to die in bed alone. I tried again to get up, using my arms when I realized one of my arms wasn’t working. My left arm had gone numb. Now I thought maybe I was having a heart attack. Then I thought, I barely have a heart left, how in the world has it gone under attack. Those few moments as I laid there crying all I could think of was getting up. I had to get up. If I could get up, then I could figure out what was going on. I tried to yell for the girls and that’s when I realized my mouth wasn’t working either. Now things were getting serious. My lower lip seemed to feel heavy and tingly and I was starting to realize that my lip through possibly my breast was numb along with my left arm. I don’t know how I did it, but with all my might and screaming through pain I rolled myself over and got to at least my knees. I didn’t want to alarm the kids, so I tried with all I had to get them up and ready for school. I got myself dressed, got the girls fed and into the car. It was the longest hour of my life. I managed to get them to the drop off and I went on my way to work. I got to the office and instantly was pulled into a meeting, where I noticed I couldn’t sit. If I sat the pain would be too much for me. What the heck was going on?! After the meeting I could barely walk and my boss wanted to call an ambulance, but being as stubborn as I am, I declined vehemently and decided I would drive myself to the hospital. I had my parents meet me there and I got into the ER where they did all sorts of test and fed me with all kinds of meds. I don’t remember all that much of the next 6 weeks. Yea you heard me….6 weeks. I somehow lost that time. It was just gone. I remember crying a lot during that time, I remember being in so much pain, I remember my mother sitting next to my bed and taking care of the girls. I remember my oldest coming into my room in tears asking if I was going to die. No, I was not going to die. I had a herniated disc between C3-4 in my cervical spine. I did not get in an accident, I wasn’t hit or pushed or thrown from a car. I am just fragile. Like in A Christmas Story…F R A G I L E! The doctors could not believe I herniated a disc in my sleep. They didn’t believe me at first. They insisted that I was in some traumatic accident that would have done such a thing, but nope. Nada, nothing. Just sleeping. After tests and med management I was able to get to physical therapy where I would spend the better part of a year, three times a week. Sometimes it was so bad that it would affect my bowels and that’s definitely not cute. I didn’t leave the house much, I didn’t go anywhere and my relationship with many including friend guy began to suffer. It’s amazing to me how being in pain affects everyone around you, not just you. It changes a piece of you every day. It takes away all things good in you and makes you and everyone around you miserable. Being in a relationship with pain is much like being in a bad relationship with a mate. Every day you wake up hoping today’s the day things change, today’s the day you feel better, today things will be different, but it’s not. It’s groundhog day every day and it’s the same routine, the same questions and finally one day you realize you are part of the problem. And with that it’s time to do something different.