Varying Degrees

I have a lot of blogs that I read on a fairly regular basis. One of them is Dino - Frozen Not Fossilized who recently posted about pain. It made me think. In a good way.

One of the things I try not to do is compare my pain to someone elses. It just isn't possible. As a nurse I follow Margo McCaffery's (1968) definition of pain: "Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does... So by that definition my 5 may be another person's 10.

I can't even begin to explain as a nurse how frustrating that definition is, but it is what it is. What is supposed to happen when someone is in pain? It is supposed to be treated. How do you treat the emotional pain of pregnancy loss, infertility, etc? There's no easy answer for that. Some would say alcohol, others therapy, blogs, friendships, etc.

A few months ago a friend was hurt by my optimism... Both of us had been ttc for a while.. she longer than I. Her way of coping was much different than my way of coping. Words were said, feelings were hurt as is generally the case and eventually we got over it. That's what friends do.

What my friend didn't realise until I told her was that my optimism was my treatment for my own pain. The only person that knew that at the time was my husband. Even he was becoming Mr. Optimistic... (he generally is Mr. Pessimistic so a small miracle was taking place). He knew that for me to feel okay with all that we had been through I had to stay optimistic, that eventually things would go our way.

I couldn't focus on the facts - that we've been praying, trying etc to get him a job over by our house for the past 2.5 years, that we'd been trying to have a baby for almost a year and all we had to show for it was a few pictures of positive pregnancy tests and the diagnosis of habitual aborter. These facts I'm ignoring and will continue to do so for a while longer. I know they're there. I'm fine with that, but they won't ever stay in the fore front of my life.

To do that would just not be me... instead I'll focus on 3 years of knowing and loving a wonderful man and that even with all the losses every time I've ever seen a positive pregnancy test we've had hope and optimism - even for a brief few minutes that feeling is something to treasure.

This month we've triggered and sometime in a little over 2 weeks or so we'll know whether this worked or not. Until then I'm going to go treat whatever pain I have with optimism and hope that this worked... I hope that whatever pain has brought you here is treated by whatever you find comfort in. I also hope I haven't caused you more pain with my optimism. If I have I'm sorry, but at least now you know why there's generally a lot of optimism around here. It's my drug of choice... now if only I could bottle that. I think Optimism and Hope would be wonderful drugs and my wish for you is that you take a little bit of the two of those. No matter what your story is... everyone deserves Hope and Optimism.