[hamstergirl]

Went to church to thank God for a visit with a friend.

I wound up staying there after the service, in massive physical pain and begging silently for the strength to go home. I was in massive pain and didn't want to come back to my apartment. I feel comforted at church.

I was in massive pain, physically, emotionally. I sat there in dead silence, unable to speak, unable to cry, wanting to shout my pain to the "Highest Throne in Heaven". Ozzie will understand.

I sat there in an empty church, begging God for the strength and the help to go home.

A parishioner saw me at around 11 p.m., bent down and started asking me questions.

"Was I waiting for someone to pick me up?" No I came alone under my own power.

"Was I all right?" No, I was having a bad night.

He offered to walk me home and he was firing questions at me all the way there: one after the other. The way the General should have done and didn't, but then again, I didn't feel "safe" at the General or with the "whitecoats."

His name was Patrick and he had worked at the church until this Easter and had seen me around the parish.

In the end, he offered to interact with me (talk with me) at church and even take me out for coffee.

Mental health resources in the community have been failing me miserably, but the Church has yet to let me down. I trust God more than I do some doctor I'm sorry to say. I have my shrink, but I see him for 45 minutes every two weeks.

Sorry, my illness is constant and requires constant work, so I'm building my own support network in a "safe" (ie non-triggering) environment.

Christ said something about having to take up your cross to follow him. He never said anything about doing it without help. (Even he had help with his, so I have help with mine, spreading out the weight among many people. I may have to bear the physical pain alone. No one can suffer that in my place. But I don't need to suffer emotiionally I see that now, especially after talking with Doug and Father Lindsay).

So I need help with my cross. Sue me. I don't think God would object.


There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[PlanningtoLive]

I'm glad you made it home, not happy that you were in so much pain.

You are right though - God would not want you to deal with everything alone..........those verses from Footprints come to mind....how it goes from two sets to one and the person believed that God had forsaken him.........and God said, "no, my child, that is when I was carrying you."

I think we all need that at times.


<font color=blue>To see the wonders of our world, look at it through the eyes of a child</font color=blue>

[inkblot]

I find your story almost inspirational. So you needed help with your cross...it reminds me of "Footprints". I love that! It's on my keychain. What you say is true. We don't need to do everything alone. God sent that person to help you, and it sounds like he is a wonderful person! I'm glad to hear about people doing such nice things in the world, and just being a friend to someone who needs help. I have been able to experience the kindness of others, and though I'd have rather not been in the situation, I felt blessed by their actions. In one case, my mysterious friend literally disappeared after paying for my food. The computer link was down for my food stamps so that wouldn't work, and I had no job, cash, or credit card. I followed this person out of the store, and he vanished once out the door. I don't know if I blinked or what happened, but I thanked God none the less. Like you said, God wouldn't object. He wouldn't even prosecute. {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{hamstergirl}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

[LadyDragus]

I am very glad you are getting the hlep I could not offer, or give to you..

I am glad ozzie is helping you more than I could too..

I am really glad to hear someone else in 3 D land is offernin got help you too.

Be well Michelle..
Be safe when you can and God Bless you in whatever way he can.



<font color=purple>
take time to heal thyself before trying to help others, or you will never get better

[cleomaru]

you are your own worst enemy they say, you're really lucky that peopel at your church accept you along with your illness, it';s such a problem in most places, we even have a group here in wisconsin called, Caring for the Soul, they have conferences every year to get ideas on how to better inttigrate the medical and spiritual communities and how they can help each other.

If anyone wants information let me know

cleo

"don't kick the puppy" ~ j.e.p.

[(JD)]

good to hear your words. many years ago I learned that it isn't WHAT we go through (trials or whatever) it's HOW we go through it.

God can allow, or send any level of good or difficulty our way. He isn't concerned with what the event is, he already knows. His concern is HOW we handle it, HOW we go through it, respond, learn, act.....

I'm glad to hear you have spiritual guidance to help you go through this.

<font color=blue> meditation is a true way to connect to the Source </font color=blue>

[hamstergirl]

I turned to God when it became blatantly and painfully obvious that the medical profession wasn't helping me. My physical pain is constant and my emotional pain has also been constant, running on like an endless river through the years. In fact, I am asking God to protect me FROM the medical profession and not for help from it.

Apart from this website and a few loyal friends in 3D, God has provided me with more help than mortal man ever has. He has also led me to said friends, people with the power to help me and who I can try to trust.

But it's gonna take a while to get that trust. No offense, but trust was not one of the values my parents left me with. Their biggest legacies in my life has been anger and fear and I don't want to admit that anything good in me came from them. My mother is less culpable than my father of course, because she's frightened by him and under his thumb. What else am I supposed to think of a woman who tells me to keep secrets from my father and who speaks for him in current ongoing e-mail correspondence? He never writes to me himself, it's always her.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[cleomaru]

hey never totally close the door on a resource though, i mena, like i found my psychiatrist,the most awesome genuine doc, in the county mental health system of all places, and i've known some very very good people there, professional wise,..... justdon't burn the bridge yet, buti can' understand wanting ot be away form them, i was in the er once, withdrawl from amuscle relaxant was hurting like hell, and like 5 nu4rses docs aids, they totaly stereotyped my borderline, they made me cry and then said i was the one making a scene.........

"don't kick the puppy" ~ j.e.p.

[hamstergirl]

You told me about how you were hurting from a muscle relaxant and started crying, and the doctors said you were making a scene. Well, what did they expext?!? They were doing things that hurt you. Trying to heal you, yes. But hurting you in the process.

I face the reality of having to deal with these people on a regular basis. A person with CP needs a team of specialists and because of deep-seated awful feelings, I am not seeing them regularly, because it brings back unpleasant memories. Occupational therapists, physiotherapists, doctors, nurses, seating clinics. I associate fear with all of them, because when I dealt with them, physical torment was not far behind.

I underwent regular operations and physiotherapy, some of it brutal. I forced to undergo pool therapy when suffering from fear of drowning so severe, I wanted to run away. I did run away one night and hide in a change room, I got reprimanded and yelled at for that.

I cried, I screamed, I probably resisted in other ways when I wasn't crying or screaming. My parents said something like I was making a scene. My father screamed at me for crying. They sent me off to a psychiatric institute for one and a half years for "non-compliance". That basically saying "We're locking our child up for a year and a half because she's been bad." My parents say I refused to be helped and was kicked out. They are still angry and bitter and will not sit down with me and a psychiatrist to talk things out because it's "all been done before."

They made me out to be the bad seed from hell, but I wasn't trying to make their lives miserable. In some instances, I was reacting to what was going on around me and in others, I was just being a normal kid. Kids will sometimes hit their siblings and not want to play with their little sister because they're cramping their style. My sister would run to my mother, tell her and then my mother would say: "You're lucky your sister wants to play with you, most siblings wouldn't want to play with disabled children."

Now maybe there's some truth to that statement, but a nine year old kid isn't ready for the truth. They told me that I was going to be abandoned by my own friends on a regular basis and from the way they were screaming at me, they were looking like they were rejecting me. Screaming and bitterness is not the hallmark of an understanding parent, compassion is. It's OK to punish a kid, but if they're still punishing themselves well into adulthood for things they did as a child....Houston, we have a problem.

So I stopped crying and screaming, just took everything in what appeared to be good-natured silence. Because my parents told me to be a "good patient". That includes not making a scene. But the terror remains, so I avoid the medical doctors completely. Now I have no choice, but to deal with them, and IT MAKES ME SICK TO MY STOMACH.

Psychiatrists are less culpable. The idiots that dealt with me in the institute did almost as much damage as the med docs, because they didn't understand me and I didn't understand them. I have been trying to understand and think like them ever since.

Besides, psych docs deal with the mind. not the body. If they take great care, the bodily damage they will inflict on you will be minimal. In the event of drugs and treatments that cause harmful side effects, there should be a greater respect for these in the psychiatric doctor community, because many people will not seek treatment because of them. My activist friend, named Sue, refuses to deal with psychiatrists at all, because her memory was destroyed by electroshock therapy, there is medical proof for the fact that her memory is destroyed. She's even counselled me not to deal with them. I was trying to explain my new diagnosis to her and she said beware of labels. I stopped explaining myself in terms of diagnosis and started explaining myself in how I felt and reacted to things, using the symptom list from Psych Central.

The thing is: I researched my "label" and went through the list one thing at a time, to determine if what they were telling me was hogwash or not and what I found, not only confirmed the diagnosis, it actually helped make a lot of sense of my life, like why I was systematically tearing down social supports needed to recover from depression. And other behaviors, some of which caused me grief with my family.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.