my time of suffering
MY STRUGGLE WITH CHRONIC pain began out of the blue. One gray December day, I woke up and couldn’t feel my hands. I wrung my arms, shook them violently. Held them under hot, then cold, water.
No sensation.
I’m a full-time writer whose typing hands pay the rent. Panicked and bewildered, I called my doctor. “Probably carpal tunnel syndrome,” she said.
The symptoms worsened. Prickly tingling crept up my arm and into my shoulders. The numbness became burning, aching, stabbing pain. Even my fingernails seemed to throb.
Nerve twitches began in my legs, arms, back and face. I couldn’t sleep and arose each day exhausted. I broke out in shingles. I suffered panic attacks. Random stressors—a crowd, a long line, everyday occurrences in New York—sent me fleeing.
Increasingly desperate, I sought out help from an army of health practitioners: orthopedists, neurologists, chiropractors, nutritionists and even a Hasidic Jewish healer.
My medication list grew as
