In a Season of Darkness, Grow Towards the Light
"Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is optional."
As a healthy man soon to turn eighty, I was struck four months ago by multiple myeloma. Myeloma is a blood cancer, an intensely painful condition in the bone marrow that over time can weaken and hollow out one's spine and other bones. It can feel like a leaden anchor relentlessly pulling you underwater. Conventional pain medicines have done little to alleviate this pain. I am largely confined to a recliner by day and a bed by night. While experiencing a harrowing, inescapable level of physical anguish, I've developed a new relationship with pain that has revealed a way of being I hadn't imagined possible prior to the onset of this cancer. I've described these discoveries to my medical team and they've urged me to share them with those enduring intense physical pain. I describe them not as a prescription for others but simply as one individual's journey of discovery, an evolving personal response to a common, inescapable challenge.
