God, yeah. The pain from open abdominal surgery is one of the only pains I've flat out blacked out from. The other one is rupturing ovarian cysts.
I think that, for me, I just get to a point where I have SO MUCH pain that I just flat out do not have the energy to actually actively cope with MI. I'm using every damn spoon I have to deal with the physical situation and I end up disconnecting from the MI situation. It's still there, but there's a distance that allows me to go "ugh, not dealing with you" and I cope that way. (And I do think that's a way to cope.)
I don't worry too much about the scarring, because the focus of my SI is something that would naturally scar anyways, plus it's not scarring that anyone would actually see.* I just got to the point where having to deal with the infections and other complications that come with the disease wasn't worth the soothing that the SI gave me anymore. It's just that, now, I'm left with nothing to focus my SI on until I get another cyst. (And, tbh, I'm really going to try to break the whole "SI by digging at cysts" thing because this surgery has gone SO BAD and I really do not want to fucking do this shit again.)
and yes, I absolutely grok the whole "pain ending the suspense" thing, especially since my body is weird and will give me random levels of pain for the same thing on different days. Sometimes having a consistent "If I do X, I will have Y level of pain" is very soothing. It makes me feel like I have some sort of control over something having to do with my disabilities.
(* I had surgery for hidradenitis suppurativa. The first surgery was on my breast, and this surgery was in my groin. HS tends to focus in intimate areas, so if you're not sexually active and don't like running around naked, you can very easily hide it. That's part of the reason I ended up focusing there.)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-22 04:48 pm (UTC)I think that, for me, I just get to a point where I have SO MUCH pain that I just flat out do not have the energy to actually actively cope with MI. I'm using every damn spoon I have to deal with the physical situation and I end up disconnecting from the MI situation. It's still there, but there's a distance that allows me to go "ugh, not dealing with you" and I cope that way. (And I do think that's a way to cope.)
I don't worry too much about the scarring, because the focus of my SI is something that would naturally scar anyways, plus it's not scarring that anyone would actually see.* I just got to the point where having to deal with the infections and other complications that come with the disease wasn't worth the soothing that the SI gave me anymore. It's just that, now, I'm left with nothing to focus my SI on until I get another cyst. (And, tbh, I'm really going to try to break the whole "SI by digging at cysts" thing because this surgery has gone SO BAD and I really do not want to fucking do this shit again.)
and yes, I absolutely grok the whole "pain ending the suspense" thing, especially since my body is weird and will give me random levels of pain for the same thing on different days. Sometimes having a consistent "If I do X, I will have Y level of pain" is very soothing. It makes me feel like I have some sort of control over something having to do with my disabilities.
(* I had surgery for hidradenitis suppurativa. The first surgery was on my breast, and this surgery was in my groin. HS tends to focus in intimate areas, so if you're not sexually active and don't like running around naked, you can very easily hide it. That's part of the reason I ended up focusing there.)