Dancing has brought me to the point that with the exception of setbacks here and there, I live a pain-free life. And when I do have pain, I know how to heal it speedily. I am now seizing the next phase in my recovery: getting crazy strong and athletic again. I intend to start waking up early, eating a healthy breakfast, going for an increasingly long ride, then returning home for a dip in the jacuzzi and the beginning of my work day. I’ll be tracking my progress on Twitter and Facebook each day, so if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to follow me there!

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On top of that, I couldn’t retreat, lay low, and focus on self-healing, because the demolition and construction continued. Considering that following the injury, even the sound of cracking eggs was causing me pain, the banging below was intolerable. Wearing earplugs was anything from impossible to uncomfortable for a while, because given the hypersensitivity caused by the injury, I could not tolerate the pressure in my ears. I ended up a café refugee but had a hard time functioning there as well, given that the sound of dishes clanging or people talking was causing me terrible pain.

On Thursday, August 11, I was informed that the painter was coming the next day. Fortunately, with some self-advocacy on my part and compassion on the part of the head carpenter, I was able to postpone it until after the weekend. In addition, that morning, I was able to tolerate earplugs; so I turned on the air conditioning and was able to pull off a much-needed, restorative, 16-hour sleep.

On Saturday, things were looking up following a delicious cranio-sacral appointment in my very own living room, and I felt I was on my way to recovery. Then on Sunday, I had a conversation that brought up the whole “bad things keep happening to you” backlash I’d gotten over the years when sharing my story. I was feeling vulnerable to begin with, so I ended up highly triggered and, as an upshot, an emotional wreck.

I felt too shaky to drive to teach class that night but did it anyhow. Fifteen minutes into the class, nobody had showed up, and I felt terrible anxiety and self-doubt — of the will-my-business-fail variety. Then a student showed up in horrific pain; I taught what was quite possibly the best class ever; the student was completely pain-free from the class; and she expressed a deep and heartfelt gratitude for my creating the space and offering the guidance to self-heal. I left on cloud 9, knowing that even if I can affect one person’s life like that, all my efforts have been worth it.

I took myself to the gym for some R&R in the jacuzzi and ended up being visually stalked by a woman with creepy energy – which unnerved me again. That night, I decided to hell with financial concerns. I just needed to have a quiet place where I could get grounded, do work, and rest, so I decided to check myself into the Marriott in Marina Del Rey – where I could walk on the beach when taking breaks from working. I saw it as a mini-vacation.

I tried waking up at 6 am, to get out of the apartment before the painters came, but I was so tired that I ended up pressing snooze for four hours straight and sleeping shittily as a result. Finally I got out of bed and made my way to the hotel. Not only did it end up being a different property than I thought (it was a Courtyard Marriott, instead of a regular Marriott), but there was – ta-da! – a major demolition and construction project going on in front of the hotel.

You are fucking kidding me.

I cancelled my reservation there and made a reservation at the Marriott near the beach – which is where I’d intended to go the whole time. I arrived to find not only that there was construction going on in the front of the building, but in the back as well.

Exhausted from the assault on my nerves all week long, not to mention the run-around trying to find a place to ground, and desperately needing to just lie down somewhere, I asked the receptionist if I might be able to survive the noise with the windows closed. She informed me (good for her for being honest!) that the jack hammers at 8 am that morning had sent half the guests running from one side of the hotel to another, only to be greeted by more intolerable noise on the other side.

So I cancelled my reservation and went to the beach area. Fortunately, Gladys the Parking Goddess was in my favor, and I found a spot right in front of a café that had been highly recommended to me a few months earlier. Unfortunately, the sounds of dishes banging and coffee grinding made it very challenging for me to be inside. I explained my hypersensitivity to someone and asked her to save my place, so that I could wait outside. But she didn’t, and between trying to plug my ears from the noise and keep them open to communicate with people (plugging my ears while talking made me hurt myself from my own amplified voice, and not plugging my ears made me hurt from the outside noise), let’s just say that after a couple of rounds of trying to get a tuna wrap and medium latte, I fled the scene.

Great. Something basic like ordering a sandwich had become impossible.

I walked to the beach, where I sat and cried from frustration and depletion. I tried calling my best friend but couldn’t hear a damn thing she said. The cell phone was hurting my ear, given the injury, so I couldn’t hold it close; and the crashing waves were making it impossible to hear over the speaker phone.

I actively decided to get things in perspective. While it was certainly unnerving to be essentially homeless, the beach at Marina Del Rey was really not such a bad place for that to happen. And while my business was in a critical time where I had to explode forward with a burst of energy, in order to achieve the level of success I need within the time frame of the loan I recently received, I had a terrific media coordinator holding the fort and keeping things on course while all this craziness was happening. So maybe things were not progressing as fast and furiously as I’d like them to be, but they were moving forward nonetheless.

Then there was the fact that I had a car to get me around, a computer and Skype phone to work at cafes, my overall health despite the pain and hypersensitivity in my ear from the injury, the power of self-healing – meaning that over time, I could heal my ear too, my creativity and intelligence, and a host of other privileges. In addition, while the explosive noise did injure me, it didn’t make me deaf, for which I was grateful.

In addition, while I’m in a tight and beginning-to-be-scary financial situation right now, I did in fact have enough budge room to get cranio-sacral therapy and book myself into a hotel for a few days. What’s more, I was not starving; I was not in an abusive relationship; and with the exception of the recent injury, I was functionally pain-free and mobile.

Considering the million and six ways there are to be disabled, and considering what happens in this country every day (hang out in any police station or hospital to get perspective), not to mention what goes on around the world every day, I really had nothing to complain about.

So I took myself to a Mediterranean café, where I had a delicious falafel lunch, and where a nice tourist struck up a conversation with me. I looked out at the palm trees, beach, and happy tourists, and things did not seem so bad.

To be continued…

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while now, it’s no surprise that navigating through public space is a challenge for me: Repeated traumas over the years have left me with a hypersensitive body. That hypersensitivity in turn has made me vulnerable to those who find it more important to shave two seconds off their walk or drive than to gracefully offer those around them an extra bubble of body space.

A few weeks ago, I took the risk of sharing with a friend the grief I was feeling over my latest challenge navigating space. Being that she was a person who lived with chronic pain, I anticipated she would respond with understanding and empathy. Instead, she remarked, “Why do these things keep happening to you?”

I suddenly felt judged and unsafe, which I said. My friend and I got into a deep conversation, in which she revealed that the “everything happens for a reason” approach has been very helpful for her in coping with her own series of repeated traumas and resulting pain and disability.

When I challenged her thinking – pointing to the overwhelming levels of randomness, chaos, and violence in our universe – she shared that she suddenly felt confused about how to process her own experience. I encouraged her to stay true to it, ie, if you believe everything happens for a reason, and if that approach helps you keep on keeping on, then go for it! Don’t let me stop you.

And I really mean that.

The problem is when the “everything happens for a reason” camp talks about their belief system as if it is indisputable fact, and worse yet, when they impose that belief system on me. That’s tantamount to telling me that the reason X happened in my life is because Jesus distinctly wants me to do Y. Yeah, you go sing your Christmas carols to your heart’s content, but don’t come knocking on my door on December 25! I’ll be busy eating Chinese food.

Which is all background for what happened today: This friend called and said, among other things, that she had read my blog post about the recent injury to my ear, and that she “wanted to comment but didn’t know what to say.” She repeated that twice.

Maybe I’m projecting here – I haven’t talked to her about it yet (because I didn’t and still don’t have the energy), so I recognize up front that I may have misinterpreted where she was coming from. But I got the distinct impression that the reason she “didn’t know what to say” was that she perceived the incident not from a place of compassion, empathy, and interest in supporting my recovery, but rather from a place of removal, evaluation, and commentary – ie “why do these things keep happening to you.” I presume that knowing I would not appreciate that kind of comment, she didn’t leave one. Which of course is better than leaving a comment that will piss me off.

But don’t then go and imply what you were thinking, because it’s almost worse than just saying it straight out. Moreover, when I’m faced with a health challenge, no matter whether it’s my first or my millionth (come to think of it, especially if it’s my millionth), how about a little cheerleading pom-pom action — comments like this:

• “You’ve overcome worse. You’ll kick the ass of this injury and further deepen your self-healing powers. I have faith in you!”
• “Remember to dance out your pain and angries. If the stereo is hurting your ear, dance to the music in your mind!”
• “I’m sending you healing energy, prayers, dancing angels, fairies, and sparkly elves to support you in your recovery.”
• “Let me know if there’s anything you need. I’m here for you!”

You know, be present with me in the moment of what’s happening, instead of stepping out and looking at me through shady glass, or worse yet, stepping out and looking down at me through shady glass. Love me. Hold my hand. Sing me affirmations. Support me in self-healing.

Anyhow, as soon as she made that comment about her non-comment, I wanted to get off the phone. I exited gracefully, but by the time we hung up, I was shaking in my core. Again, maybe I’m projecting all over my friend. But I’ve had enough experiences with people telling me (in my weakest, most vulnerable, and frightened moments, I might add) that I have bad luck, bad karma, that I “must have done something horrible” in my life, that I’m “attracting this energy”…that I think it’s worthwhile to explore the impact these responses have on me. So let us begin:

There are a whole lot of things that can be freaking me out right now:

1. How long will the pain last?
2. Is the hearing damage permanent?
3. How can I function, when even the sound of cracking eggs is hurting me now?
4. Will the lost work hours irreparably undermine my ability to get my company off the ground at this critical time?
5. How can I afford body work treatments when finances are tight?
6. Will Western medical diagnostic tools be able to detect the damage that obviously happened, or will it be another case of my pain and suffering being invalidated?
7. How might dedicating my self-healing energy to this injury effectively drain my reserves for other healing, or as OAR puts it, “How many times can I break till I shatter?”
8. How can I afford going to a hotel when finances are tight?
9. If I don’t go to a hotel, will my situation get even worse?
10. Will the apartment manager be open to helping me out with the expenses that resulted from the explosive noise? Will asking for his contribution lead to conflict that at the end of the day will simply exacerbate what I’m going through?

Despite all these uncertainties and anxieties, I have been bringing my attention – again and again – to what I can do about the situation at hand, instead of focusing on that which is outside my control:

• I’ve been pouring my energies into self-healing and affirmations.
• I’ve gone ahead and committed to a hotel for the week if need be, and I have scheduled two cranio-sacral appointments — putting my health and wellness first and leaving the rest up to Providence.
• I’ve stopped even trying to move my business ahead right now, knowing that it’s more important to take care of my body and rest. And rest I’ve done — sleeping up to 16 hours at a shot.
• I’ve asked the manager for the accommodation I’ve needed to rest, despite feeling super-uncomfortable about asking.

That there is a lot of mental discipline, considering the number and weight of uncertainties right now. And the discipline has paid off: When I woke up this morning, the pain and hearing weirdness was not only at an all-time low since the incident, but I felt peaceful and happy.

Then I got that phone call and the non-comment comment. Not only did I start shaking, but my ear started hurting. And I felt so rattled that I suddenly was afriad to get into the car to teach my class. I felt unstable and did not want to therefore end up in a car crash.

Telling someone they have bad luck or bad karma or that they are attracting negative energy or any of the other permutations of this same notion can only serve to undermine whatever confidence someone who has been traumatized needs to heal from that trauma.

Self-healing takes tremendous focus, power, and resolve. All our energies must be lined up in service to this one goal. Each comment someone makes or action someone takes that distracts our focus or otherwise pulls us out of this alignment can impede our healing progress significantly.

What’s more, there is a cumulative effect of being faced, again and again and again, with people responding not from a place of love, compassion, and support, but from a place of judgment, ridicule, dismissal, invalidation, and so on. The million ways so many people — friends, doctors, random strangers — choose to respond. It’s absolutely depleting. It’s traumatizing in its own damn right. I dare say that at this point in my life, I have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from people’s response to the traumas I have endured, more so than from the traumas themselves.

Which leads me to conclude this: Friendly fire is worse than enemy fire. For starters, it’s totally unexpected, so we’re not even braced for what’s coming. The filters are off, so it can really get under our skin. It also can mess with our sense of trust, safety, and support – effictively leading to a sense of isolation in the moment that we need support the most. In addiiton, it can lead to self-silencing: People can get so afraid of the response to the trauma they have endured, that they dare noe even mention it. And we all know how healthy it is to internalize distress!

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That psychological turmoil ended up pulling my energies from self-healing and leaving me not only in jacked up pain, but also shaky. I called my mom to process the experience and let her know that I needed an energy healing boost. That’s when she pulled her own weirdness with me, turning my pain into a science experiment about her healing powers, and we ended up in a fight.

Feeling not only shaken up but also isolated, I then had to get in a car and drive to teach my weekly Dancing with Pain® basics class. For two weeks, only one person had showed up. So I changed the day for class last week. Then nobody showed up.

Fifteen minutes into class this time, I was alone in the studio once again, feeling quite depressed and crying about my miserable day thus far. Then I started thinking about cancelling the class altogether and just offering the occasional workshop. The Universe, it seemed, was telling me that people were not ready for a weekly class.

Right about then, a regular student walked in, expressing that she was in horrific levels of pain and very much looking forward to class. And guess what? From my perspective, it ended up being the best damn class I’ve ever taught.

The words were just there, welling from deep inside me. I didn’t even pull my cheat sheet out of my bag, never mind look at it. I wasn’t just talking to my student. I was talking to myself – offering guidance on connecting to the breath and the body; waving hello to the pain, then letting it fade into the background; inviting the naysayers in our minds to join us in a lovely dance; inviting the light inside us to expand ever so easily and fill up the darkness…

Not only did my student end up pain-free for an hour, as she told me after class, but I danced out all my demons; my ear in particular and head in general immediately and dramatically improved; and I could not help but smile from ear to ear as I pranced around the studio.

The session was, in fact, one of the most physically vigorous dance sessions I have ever danced. I was dancing on my head (literally), taking stabs at handstands, doing bridge poses (which were absolutely outside my limit for the loooongest time), and otherwise leaping all around the damn place.

After class, my student gave me a heartfelt expression of gratitude for creating the space and offering the guidance on self-love and self-healing and for sharing my can-do attitude. I told her that her feedback was very meaningful to me, but she had no idea how much. It really fucking made my day.

With a body and spirit that felt totally fabulous, I headed off to my state-of-the-art gym, for some R&R in the spa. I got buck naked and prepared for some deliciousness in the spa. But as I walked down the steps, something energetically did not feel right.

There was a woman across the jacuzzi who seemed to be staring at me intently, in a way that felt super invasive. Being that I didn’t have on my glasses to confirm if she was or was not in fact staring at me or if she was just spaced out, I closed my eyes and tried to block her out. But when I opened them, she seemed to be staring either at me or at a point just beyond me (or both), and, well, her energy was just weird.

So I got up and started leaving the Jacuzzi. I felt her eyes piercing me as I got out of the pool. Totally creepy. Especially considering that buck naked thing. I realized I was too hot to go into the steam room, and I did not want to lie down on my favorite lounge chair, because I’d be right in her line of site. “Aha!” I schemed. “I’ll lie on the lounge chair right behind her. Then she can’t look at me.”

I swear I felt her not only watch me but also register irritation. I was comfortably situated behind her and to her right for all of 10 seconds. She seemed agitated until she abruptly swiveled so that her back was facing me, but her head was facing sideways – ie, able to see me. “You’re fucking kidding me,” I thought.

She did all kinds of gestures, like she was getting the jet on this body part or that, but honestly, the energy just screamed stalker. And it was all of one minute before she swiveled around totally, facing me. Is there no peace for the battle-weary?

I got up. With the intention of placing my foot dangerously close to hers, so she could get a little jolt of fear that I was going to step on it. But I’m too fucking nice, so I ended up moving my foot out at the intending angle, but then flying it way out of reach of her hands. So that I just ended up putting my body at a bad angle, then obsessing about whether I’d pay for it.

Blech.

The thing about situations like this is, when it’s energetic, there’s no way to definitively hold someone accountable for their behavior. They can always claim that they were just [fill in the blank]. And even if she wasn’t staring at me per se, ie, if she were fixing her gaze at a point just beyond or above me, she still could totally be directing her energy at me, but I couldn’t hold her to it.

And then when it’s a woman, well, I’m from San Francisco and all, but it still feels totally confusing to me.

Anyhow, being all rattled from the morning conversation, I could hear judgments in my head, “You see, bad things are always happening to you,” which just added to my distress. Those judgments, which are a dime a dozen in the alternative health world, leave a choke-hold on the psyche, so that it feels dangerous to say anything about our life experience, lest it be food for more evaluation and unfavorable judgment.

By the time I came home, I was really a nervous mess. I ended up banging my knee and my head, burning my food, and then burning my tongue trying to eat my burned food.

As my Ashkenazi friends would say: Oy.

Now that was definitely something caused by my emotional state, no doubt about it. Which made me wonder: Perhaps it’s a matter of unsophisticated, formulaic thinking that makes people ask why things “keep happening”: Perhaps because emotional distress can unnerve us, which in turn can make us more vulnerable to accidents, people therefore decide that every single time there are accidents, at least over and above whatever quota they pre-determine based on lord knows what criteria, they chalk it up to spiritual malfunction?

Another post for another time. Meanwhile, I am so grateful for my blog and my writing. Because after sitting on my meditation cushion, crying, a complete and total mess, I picked my ass up off the floor, came to this here computer, and wrote a bunch of blog posts – which, lookie here! – will last the week.

You see? Everything does happen for a reason.

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What do I look like, a lab rat?

It seems I have become my mother’s science experiment. I have suggested to her that if she wants to test out her methods, she ought to go and find someone else, thank you very much. “But I can’t do it on anyone else,” she has protested in reposnse.

Oy.

Mind you, I have no problem with the theoretical idea of giving my mom feedback about whether I am feeling better or not. But her invasive, detailed inquiries make the “name that number” on the 1-10 pain scale seem like heaps of fun.

Let me tell you about pain: It hurts. Period, end of issue. I’ll tell you if it’s mild or intense, and I’ll tell you if I’m feeling better or worse, but that’s as far as I’m going. Don’t ask me to peg it to a number on a chart or ask me to tell you the percentage of pain reduction I’ve experienced since you started your voo-doo magic. Doing so gives me a headache.

Plus, check this out: Doing so keeps me focused on pain. And the more I’m focused on pain – trying to figure out if I still have it, and if so, where and in what dose – the more I’m sensing, ie, feeling, pain. When I’m self healing, to the contrary, I’m specifically not focusing on pain. I’m focusing on healing.

I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s the anti-inflammatory diet or the healthy sleep habits or the exercise or the dancing or the energy healing or the positive affirmations or the whatever that is making me better. All I give a shit about is that I am getting better. And If I am getting better, and if the methods I’m utilizing promote overall healthy living as well, then heck, I’m just gonna keep on doing what I’m doing.

I also don’t have the diagnostic ability to determine which of the myriad of synergistic methods are doing the trick. That, in fact, is why complementary and alternative medicine is such a bad match for gold standard scientific studies: How the hell can you make a control group for all the different factors that go into organically healthy living? Must one group eat M&Ms all day long, while another eats organic vegan this-or-that?

Lastly, what I don’t think my mom is aware of is that when I have told her repeatedly that all I need is for her to send me love and healing, and that I’ll inform her if she needs to know about something; and when she keeps trying to talk about her latest approach and find out how it impacted me – or, as she did yesterday and today – when I can tell she’s dying to talk about it, but instead she talks around it, implying the desperate question she’s not spelling out – she’s making my healing be all about her.

And that’s exactly what practitioner after practitioner was busy doing when they “accidentally” injured me: They weren’t listening. They were busy trying to fit me into their method, instead of exploring if/how their method could fit me. Because that’s how they wanted the method to work. Or they were busy getting ego-bruised when I told them I needed gentler touch, instead of just reducing the pressure on my sensitive body. A number of them even tried to convince me that the pain was good and part of my healing.

Get this straight: When it comes to working with me on healing, it’s my way or the highway. Becuase It’s. My. Body.

A few months ago, I interviewed James Dillard, MD, for an article on how doctors can work effectively with chronic pain patients. I love one thing he said very clearly: “When you’re in the room with that patient, it is 100% about them and 0% about you.”

Amen brother.

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As I recall, the description of this syndrome was exactly what it sounded like to me and exactly what I had endured, at least on the physical level. But right now, I looked up the phrase on the internet and was disappointed to see it described as something akin to repetitive strain injury – ie, injury from doing the same motion repeatedly. I’m going to call the physical therapy office where I saw the “repetitive trauma syndrome” brochure and see exactly what it said.

Meanwhile I’m putting out there my own definition of “repetitive trauma syndrome,” as based on my own personal experience with repetitive trauma:

1.  The more we are injured, the more our bodies develop a baseline instability.

 The more our bodies are unstable, the more prone we are to injury. And so a vicious cycle is created, where we are desperately in need of optimal healing conditions that either do not exist or that are out of our reach for whatever reason. If and when we access those optimal conditions, we immediately begin to heal. In other words, our bodies just need the safety and space to rest and reboot themselves.

Usually the reasons we don’t access those optimal conditions are 1) lack of access to superior health care because of life- and wallet-depleting health insurance plans and a host of other social ills, 2) the general tendency for doctors and bodyworkers to be so self-absorbed in being “the healer” or the go-to person with the proscribed method, that they cannot truly listen and respond to their clients’ needs and responsively adapt given methods to those clients’ needs, and 3) the dependency on complicated solutions — overlooking, minimizing, or altogether dismissing the simple solutions, which in fact may be the solutions. 

2.   Along with trauma comes fear of trauma, anticipation of trauma, and the proactive avoidance of trauma.

If a doctor has aggressively touched my body instead of gently touching it, and if his doing so has caused me injury, I will not be able to trust the next doctor’s touch. If I then speak up to create safety for myself before being touched – ie, if I ask a doctor to touch me gently, but that doctor steamrolls over, altogether ignores, or ridicules my request, I will then have another layer of trauma – namely, fear of doctors.

 3.   The impact of trauma is unrecognized and mislabeled, so our self-protective measures are seen as the cause of our problems.

If my fear and mistrust of doctors is then misunderstood and diagnosed instead as belligerence, troublemaking, a victim mentality, or a blaming tendency, and if I am then treated as a “difficult” patient or if my pain and suffering is then called my own damn fault, yet another layer of trauma will be added – creating an increasing sense of being unsafe, and therefore, an increasing reality of isolation.

4.   Repetitive trauma is treated with judgment, as a character defect, instead of with compassion, as a simple fact.

Add to this mix the tendency for doctors, bodyworkers, friends, and random strangers to get pseudo-spiritual on people who have experienced repetitive trauma – especially in the alternative health circles — and you’ve got yet another layer of trauma: When you’re busy recovering from the primary trauma and needing every resource to help you in that recovery, you’re instead being told that you are somehow responsible for that trauma – by inviting it into your energy field for some grand universal lesson, for example, or by having been a wicked person in another life. Suddenly you’re being faced with blame, instead of compassion. Yet another reason to be fearful and mistrusting and to isolate.

Instability creates instability creates instability. In other words, the more trauma we experience, the more trauma we experience. In an upcoming post, I will address how to stop the vicious cycle of Repetitive Trauma Syndrome (as yours truly defines it) – both for those experiencing it and for those treating someone who has it.

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At the end of July, I went out of town for a week, to celebrate my birthday. I let the apartment manager know and requested that he arrange for the pipes on my balcony to be painted during that time. I reminded him that I’d had an allergic reaction to the paint job a few months earlier and emphasized that my week out of town would be perfect timing for a paint job, if it was doable.

The manager was happy to oblige, but as it turned out, the pipes couldn’t be painted, because they would get super hot and bubble — which would make them look terrible. The manager not only emailed me about that but also said, “We noticed the paint on the fascia boards around your roof line was fading. So I told the painters to re do all that. The green paint outside your patio is being totally re done.”  

Maybe it was the way the email was written, maybe it was the way I read it. Regardless, I was left with the impression that the trim had been done while I was gone. I thanked the manager for taking care of business while I was away. Then a day or two after my return, I woke up to find the painter outside, working on the trim.

I panicked, because I had gotten no advance notice that he would be working on the area outside my space that day; I therefore was totally unprepared; and I did not want to end up in another three-day period of sickness from paint fumes.

The manager was away from the office, but the head carpenter took the painter off the job, which I greatly appreciated. The carpenter also explained to me that the paint they use on the trim is different than the paint they had used on the stairwell – ie, it’s water-based instead of oil-based, it’s is not nearly as noxious, and it airs out significantly faster.

Regardless, we agreed that I would let the manager know a date within the next week or two when I’d be out of my apartment and they could paint. So I emailed the manager the next day and told him to pick any day in the coming week. I asked him to just give me a heads-up, so that I could make myself scarce that day.

I was informed that the painter would be painting trim all over the apartment building the entire coming week: “He will be there for about 5 days. Only 1 day will he be working…near your windows, so the office will let you know what day that will be.”  

I appreciated the heads-up and made a mental note that I might need to move my office HQ to a local café during the interim. Given that the paint was not supposed to be as toxic and irritating as the one previously used, however, and given that the painting around my space was just going to be one day, I had a low-key attitude about it: I figured I’d keep my windows closed on the apartment building side and see if I in fact needed to leave as a result of fumes.

In other words, given the information I had, I didn’t see any urgency in leaving on a given day or in preparing a trip out of town for a few days. As it turned out, however, painting was not the only thing going on that week. The carpenters were in fact remodeling the apartment below mine, which included first demolishing it. I found out the hard way:

On Wednesday morning, I was surprised by an explosive bang that sent a shock of intense pain through my ears and head and that effectively messed up my hearing for several days. It’s now over 72 hours later, and I’m still in the process of recovering. After the incident, I felt as if there were a brick in both ears; sounds like that of cracking eggs were suddenly painful; the sound of my breath was disturbingly amplified in my right ear; I was too sensitive to hold the phone to my ear; and it hurt to talk.

In addition, the jolt to the nerves in my head triggered intense jaw pain and eye pain, the latter of which made it difficult to use the computer. All told, I ended up a complete mess; I was unable to function; and I effectively lost three days of work. What I really needed was to go into setback mode – get in bed, close my eyes, and give myself healing energy until my system calmed down. But I didn’t have anywhere to rest, because the bangs of construction could be heard everywhere in my apartment.

So just when I needed down time the most, I had to be out and about, trying to work at a café — where the very sound of people talking was physically painful.

On Thursday, I called the management company to ask when the painter was scheduled to work around my apartment. I found out that he was scheduled to do it the next morning. Apparently, they had been waiting for me to give them a day, though our email exchange had indicated they would call me with a day.

Regardless, the timing could not have been worse. I asked the manager if he could postpone the paint job, but he said no. I spent the evening super anxious.

I finally decided that I would just have to bite the bullet and check into a hotel if need be, despite the fact that finances are tight right now. I have learned from experience that I absolutely must do whatever it takes to give myself the rest I need to heal (such as paying twice as much for a hotel where I know the beds are good for my back).

In the morning, I decided to give postponement another try. I called and left a message for the manager, explaining how much of a difference it would make if he could remove just one of the factors driving me out of my apartment – namely, the paint job. “I’m just trying to hang on till the weekend,” I said, “when I can lay low and rest for a few days, undisturbed.”

It felt uncomfortable for me to make that call, but as I have said before, my journey through chronic pain and disability has been nothing if not a lesson in self-advocacy.

After leaving that message at 7:30 am, I closed the windows, put on the A/C, and went back to sleep. (Fortunately, by Friday I was able to wear earplugs, which I wasn’t able to do before, as a result of the heightened sensitivity.) As it turned out, the head carpenter got my message and pulled the painter off the job again.

I was deeply grateful. Not only that, but I ended up sleeping like a baby until 2:00 pm, which was tremendously helpful in calming down my jangled system. Today I received cranio-sacral therapy, which was even more helpful, and I finally feel on my way to recovery.

It’s costing me, though. Not only did I lose work, but I’m also shelling out several hundred dollars in body work; I’ll probably go ahead and stay at a hotel on the day of the painting, just because my system is still so fragile right now; and if my hearing and the sensations in my ear don’t go back to normal in the next few days, I’ll need to make a trip to an ENT specialist and possibly get a hearing test.

Meanwhile, the management company’s painting schedule was interfered with once again, which perhaps cost them money. And the carpenter expressed his sense of frustration that they were accommodating my needs but that I was not doing the same.

But here’s the thing: I can’t accommodate if I don’t know what’s coming down the pike. In each of these three scenarios, which has ended up being a pain in the ass for everyone involved, the common theme is that I did not receive advance notice of what was about to happen.

Which brings me back to my original point: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Or more specifically, communication is key. A phone call 24 hours or more ahead of time, notifying me about the details of something that’s going to significantly affect my space, will enable me to prepare accordingly.

Not only will I then be the most accommodating Annie there is, but my health will be spared, everyone’s productivity will be optimized, and expenses all around will be kept to a minimum.

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A few months ago, my doorbell rang shortly after I’d crawled out of bed. The painter for my apartment building was at my door, informing me that he was about to paint the staircase leading up to my apartment – the only way in and out of my apartment. He “asked” if I could stay in my apartment for the next hour or two until the paint dried. Given that he was standing there with his paintbrush in hand, ready to go, it wasn’t as much a question as a notice.

Regardless, always eager to accommodate where possible, I decided to rearrange my plans for the morning and stay inside until the painting was complete. So I smiled and said OK. As soon as the painter began painting, however, a pungent, noxious odor filled up my entire apartment, despite the door being shut. I felt sick and could not escape the odor or sensation.

I ran downstairs and told the painter he needed to stop until I could get out of the apartment. Advising him that I would leave ASAP, I asked him to create a pathway down the stairs, so that I would not get paint on my shoes. The painter was clearly pissed.

“But you agreed that I could paint,” he complained. “Yes, but you gave me one minute notice, and I didn’t know the paint would make me sick,” I replied. “I was happy to accommodate, but I literally can’t stay inside with these fumes.” I think I may have put in a call to the apartment management office as well; I’m a bit fuzzy on that detail. Regardless, I fled from my space as quickly as possible, with the painter giving me dirty looks as I left.

Over the next three days, I felt very ill every time I was in the apartment. I ended having to stay away all day, every day, except when I came home to sleep.

For most people, the temporary banishment may not have been a big deal. But as someone managing chronic pain and the fatigue that often accompanies that pain, it is key that I have access to a safe space where I feel comfortable and can rest at any time. Natural pain management is akin to a house of cards. Take any one of the cards away, and the house can come crashing down.

Had the management company given me advance notice, and had they informed me that the paint is known to have a noxious odor (which I found out recently they are well aware of), I could have made arrangements not only to be out of my apartment during the day of painting, but to take a mini vacation for a couple of days whlie the painting fumes aired out.

In other words, I am more than happy to work my life around the apartment management company’s needs. Not only am I generally happy to oblige people, but this company happens to be terrific. They are super responsive to tenant needs, and in addition, they went out of their way to accommodate me through a rough financial spot, so that I didn’t have to move out before getting back on my feet.

But honest, in order to take action, I need a heads-up. Had I gotten it in this case, I would have avoided getting sick, and the painter would have avoided losing time  — both waiting for me and having to redo the work he’d just done. It’s the simple things, like a phone call 24 hours or more ahead of time, that make all the difference.

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