Like sugar

It's been a rough summer.

Within a month of returning from visiting my boyfriend in the Land of Spanking (aka England) and attending a conference in Jerusalem, I came down with a respiratory virus. No big deal except that when I get a fever, it's like having needles jabbing me all over -- constantly. It's one of the ways my brain doesn't quite process sensory input correctly, the result of a disorder called Fibromyalgia.

Two weeks after the virus ended, I was in the emergency room with severe back pain and a fever of 104. I had apparently developed a urinary tract infection that had backed up into my kidneys. A few weeks later, the pain in my right foot had reached a level that I sought out a podiatrist, who said I had developed soft tissue damage as a result of spraining my ankle while I was in England three months earlier. After suffering another two weeks while my insurance sorted out whether or not it would pay for it, I was put into a cast boot, which then aggravated my low back, which in turn, kinked out my cervical vertebrae.

Just as that was finally calming down, I started having severe pain in the small of my back. Thinking it was related to the earlier low back pain resulting from my weak foot, I kept trying to do my yoga and pilates to strengthen and relax the muscles. My rhuematologist sent me to have an MRI, which came back normal aside from minor arthritis. For three weeks, whenever I turned over in bed, walked more than a few steps, sat at my desk or tried to get out of the bathtub, I would have intense, throbbing pain. Eventually I again showed up at the ER, with only a low-grade fever this time thanks to all the Vicodin I had been taking, and again was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection that had backed up into my kidneys (before June, I'd never even had one). Why I can't just get normal UTI symptoms is beyond me. But, yeah, note to self: if I have back pain that lasts more than a week, get checked for a UTI. Oh and just to make life extra fun, I had also developed a bit of bursitis in my right hip because of the cast boot and weak foot.

For the first time since I was a kid, I'm afraid of being spanked.

On an abstract level, it still has some appeal. When my boyfriend made a comment the other night about being strict, it gave me that familiar tingle. But when I start to think of actually getting one or remember past spankings, my whole body tenses up and there's a sharp feeling in that spot where the sternum and the stomach meet.

Now, I know that will change as all the Substance P that's been flooding my brain and spinal fluid returns to more managable levels (though for people with Fibromyalgia, this neurotransmitter for pain is often three times the normal level found in the spinal fluid of healthy controls). Yet, I've found myself feeling quite sad about it. Like seeing an empty chair at the family dinner table.

It dawned on me today that what has been really bothering me is that I'm afraid of losing spanking.

After surgery six years ago, I developed Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS -- also known as Myalgic Encephalomeylitis or ME outside of the US) in addition to Fibromyalgia, and since then I've lost my teaching job, my academic career (though in the long run, that may not be a bad thing), a lot of my hobbies like hiking or gardening or cantoring at church, hanging out with my friends or playing with my nieces and nephew. In addition to being lactose intolerant, I'm now soy intolerant, as well as sensitive to insoluble fiber, acidic foods, yeast, sugar substitutes/alcohols like aspartame, Splenda or sorbitol,and most preservatives and additives. Spanking is one of the few things that allows me to feel strong again.

However, the more I read about how the brain processes pain, particularly in the case of Fibromyalgia, the more it appears that the brain becomes increasingly dysfunctional the more it is forced to process pain. Robert Bennett, a professor of medicine just up the road from me at Oregon Health Science University, explains that Fibromyalgia is "a disorder in which the central nervous system amplifies pain sensations ('central sensitization') due to a complex interplay between genetic predisposition, the cumulative burden of painful insults ('perpheral pain generators) and a dysregulation of the normal response to stressors."

I often use the analogy of having a radio on that plays 80s acid rock. The radio is always on for me, but at a level where I can try and ignore it. I can't (for the most part) turn it off so I go on as best I can, though it does make sleeping or concentrating a challenge.

This summer it's been turned up almost full blast for all but about three weeks or so. It's gone back to just below half way down the dial since starting the antibiotics last week. But it's like my ears are still hearing it. And I feel exhausted. Like I've been run over by a truck or beaten up with a baseball bat.

It's made me wonder if purposefully having someone turn the dial up is a wise thing to do. Wonder about the irony of having a disorder which amplifies pain AND having a spanking kink. Particularly considering that I'm often told I seem to have a high pain threshold (at least when it comes to spanking) when actually it's the exact opposite.

Does that mean I'm an even bigger pain slut than I thought? ;)

Not that it's really an issue at the moment. My boyfriend lives in the UK and I in Portland, Oregon, and I suspect by the time we get together again, I'll be practically begging to go over his knee.

But maybe the really hard ones will be like sugar or alcohol -- something I can have once in a while but in limited amounts. Making them all the sweeter.

And maybe, since I feel pain more intensely, spanking is something I feel more intsensely as well.

And just maybe, for once, I can feel lucky to have Fibromyalgia.