Pain

Pain is a very strange thing. When someone tells you they are in pain, you try to sympathise, but without actually feeling the pain, its just a noise you make without any real understanding  That is, until you get to learn to live with pain on a day to day basis and then it is all changed  When I had the two spinal ops that changed my life and left me worse off than when I went into hospital** I was without the main pain of sciatica, but strange other pains in my legs, much less than before, but still there and enough to distract my thoughts.. Because the ops had left me semi paralysed below, I had pain which I was able to manage with the use of a strong version of codeine......  However I also developed pain in my right shoulder which they tell me is the rotary part of the shoulder for movement and of the cause which is arthritis  So they cannot do much for that apart from operating, and I don't feel like have any more operations if I can help it- so today despite the codeine, my shoulder has been most painful In fact so much so, that I had to stop the car and take some more in order to be able to drive a little better without the pain  I take almost every day between 8 and 12 tablets a day usually....  as I've said its been much more painful and so now I am sitting here just wondering whether it will be worth sitting up watching tv or would I be better off just having a hot bath and going to bed  The trouble is, that Saturday nights I try and share a foreign film with sub titles with my husband- We have so many things that we do ourselves, he is still working part time, and the evenings in our house, means that I am often upstairs on the computer, whilst he is downstairs drawing or reading or doing some other activity that relaxes his mind after working all day as an Accountant. So Saturdays are our shared evenings together... He much prefers this, than going out to see a film or dinner at a restaurant  I don't really mind, because I would be able to arrange to meet friends if I felt a need to go and eat out, or see a film. But Saturday nights have developed into an almost ritual time where we watch the films on BBC4 and then finally get ready for bed around 11 30. during the week we manage to get upstairs by about 10 30 so a little later, it being Saturday
.[.When I was younger, the idea of getting to bed so early would have been mortifying, but one does change as one gets into the last remaining decades- despite the best will in the world, we do all slow down much as I hate to admit it] 

Earlier today

I was trying to get something from higher up than I could reach, so pulled a chair closer to make the height possible, and you know, getting onto that chair was a much slower action than it used to be ha ha- however I did manage, and got what I wanted to get down, but I really was shocked how much longer it took to achieve.

With five children, I had always been on the go, never stopping for a moment, and the years just whistled by, and then you turn around, to see the kids all gone and grown up with families of their own and gone to live elsewhere, and its then that you realise that they have grown up and you have grown older. No longer can I say I am middle aged, but now if a newpaper wanted to describe me, I would probably be said to be a married pensioner in their seventies!!!  Shock! Horror, when and how did that happen.. When they were younger, and I had three, I used to daydream that in a few years they would be old enough to leave when I wanted to go out at night with their father and that we would do all the things we couldn't do when we were in our twenties.. of course what I didn't realise was that I had missed the boat.. when you are out and about in your twenties, at forties its a whole different question and maybe that its all not right for you any longer...

Well I guess you cant have it all, and we did have five healthy clever and loving children that have remained in touch and who like us as parents and want to share time with us., so it cant all be bad.. I don't know what I would advise people to do...get married early and have the family, or wait until you had done all the traveling and nightclubbing you wanted to do, career built and then look around for a husband to father your children... I think you become more picky as you get older, want more than one does in their twenties.. I think if I had left having children and marrying until later, I might have totally missed the boat as so many young people do.. and besides, having children in your late thirties and forties is much harder work than when you are younger... a hard choice, but I think I would still come down on having it earlier rather than later..