Am I "real" yet

I would HAPPILY take the combination of achey, uncomfortable situations I described in the last posts. The pain has moved to my back and hips. One sleepless night, several painkillers and one desperate phone call begging them to furnish me with something stronger and I'm slightly better off. The nurse I spoke to said most women liken it to labor pain when it reaches your lower back and hips. I can tell you now if this is labor pain there will be epidurals in my future. I consider myself to have a fairly high pain threshold but this feels like I've been crushed by a truck and now someone is twisting screwdrivers in to the most painful points. I can't sit, I can't stand, I can't lie on my back, stomach or side. If I wasn't so determined not to make this ordeal any longer than it has to be I would definitely be refusing this drug again. To do so would cause death...so no go. Just one more thing to add to the list of things I hate about cancer. (This list is growing, fast. Really need to get back to working on the list of things I like about cancer. Like, today, I was thinking of having a date night with Kyle. That's if I can kill the pain with super drugs of course.)

I have a good friend, who in an extremely unfair twist of fate, has been suffering real back pain for several years. I always sympathised, but I never understood. I know that now. I hope more than anything that she finds the cure she needs. I can't imagine having this pain with no end in sight.

Makes me think, once again, about how this experience might or might not change me. Will I be different having felt real pain, real fear? Surely there can be few fears greater then the fear of losing your life. Maybe the fear of losing a child. I don't think I'm going to come out the end of this thinking it was a blessing in disguise, or a lesson I'm glad to have learned like some cancer survivors experience. I think I'm going to put it down to what it was, a horrible thing that happened that I survived. It will definitely make me feel different, worse, uglier, fatter, balder, tired. I'll be proud though. And definitely relieved. And probably still scared - scared it's not over. Maybe it makes me a bit more real. All I've ever wanted from my life was experiences. Without them, good or bad, how can you say you've lived? There would be nothing worse than dying feeling like you never lived.

This reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit.

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”