I hate chronic pain.  It is unrelenting.  Unimaginable unless you’ve experienced it.  It steals time, memories and moments that will never be around again.  It steals life in an increasingly rise in pain levels that simply never stops.

I’d lived with chronic pain for 25 years until I had a full knee replacement.  Then a blissful two years of being normal again.  Now due to a back injury and the need for a second knee replacement I’m revisiting that state once again.

The past three weeks have been hell on earth.  Unfocused.  Unproductive.  Cocooned in sleep and pain meds, existence only.  Once I could escape through a good book, distract myself for a while.  Not so this time around.  And that, perhaps most of all these things, makes me so angry.  To be denied my one guaranteed escape is heartbreaking.

You’d think that all those old coping methods would return quickly to my defense.  Bu no, they’re in hiding somewhere in my memories that want to be forgotten.  So I’m re-learning new coping exercises.  Today is the first day that I fell somewhat human.  Somewhat.

I’ve a lot of work to catch up on.  I’m not going to beat myself up about that.  It happened, I didn’t plan it but it did.  Now all I can do is get to work and back on track.

Scheduled posts only help until they run out.  And unfortunately I’ve reached that point of “do ahead” reviews.  Fortunately for me, I’m a note taker so I’ll be fine to get caught up fast between the notes on books read but no review written up yet, and a marathon of reading ahead of me.

So with apologies to authors and publishing houses for delays – I’m off to get back to doing what I love, read and talk about books.  And learn the lesson on getting some scheduled posts ready again for the next crisis… which I’m sure is just around the corner, unfortunately.