breathing through pain

Yesterday I initially felt better, ate a little more, and actually went for a swim at the Y -- 45 minutes, more slowly than my usual, but it felt good. After this triumph I came home and developed a pretty severe attack of heartburn. I'd realized in the morning that I'd forgotten to take my evening ranitidine the night before (they've prescribed 150mg am & pm throughout the duration of the chemo sequence), so perhaps I was paying for that. Don looked up the maximum dose and said I could take an extra one, which I did, though it had no immediate impact. We'd recently started listening to an entertaining new audiobook -- John Scalzi's Lock In, and I was trying to manage the pain with tums, acupressure, and distraction. Eventually I gave up and asked Don to put on a pain relief meditation by Shinzen Young.

This recording is one we found in 2008 when my sister-in-law Kerstin was dying of pancreatic cancer. Though I'm not sure she ever listened to it herself, it helped me help her. I spent a lot of time with her in her bedroom, helping her breathe through the waves of pain. At one point she told me I'd missed my calling as a pain management doula. After this experience I did fleetingly consider reorienting my life -- hospice care or some such. Many years  earlier, before any exposure to meditation, I'd discovered my own version of breathing through pain during my neo-Luddite phase, living on a communal organic farm in Missouri and eschewing most medication, including taking no ibuprofen during my monthly menstrual cycles. I found that with enough focus and deep breathing, I could ride the waves of pain, and not suffer so much. 

Shinzen Young teaches 4 different approaches to meditating with pain -- focus on the emotional reactions to the pain, focus on the pain itself, focus on the pleasure of breathing, and focus on other, non-painful sensations -- and recommends that you try all of them, and use whichever combinations help. These techniques are to be used in circumstances where you have done whatever may be appropriate to alleviate the pain, and there is nothing more that can or should be done currently. He even asserts that in situations where there is nothing that needs to be done about the pain, the pain itself can be like an acupuncture needle - focusing and releasing energy.  

Yesterday, as soon as I stopped trying to distract myself from the pain, and turned toward it, I began to feel some relief. I was aware that some of my suffering was fear -- what if this was not heartburn, but actually my heart, reacting to the chemo and the swim? I voiced this fear to Don and he didn't seem to think we needed to call for medical attention, so I was able to mostly let it go. There was also the physical tension of this fear and of the feeling of "fighting" the pain. As I relaxed more physically, the pain began to feel manageable. Still there, but smaller. I actually managed to doze on and off through parts of the teaching tape. Eventually the ranitidine took effect too I suppose. I had a bit of heartburn on & off during the rest of the evening, but was able to not tense up against it.  I managed to eat some dinner, we watched Brother from Another Planet, and I slept well most of the night (without any lorazepam!).