Frailty the name is woman

Pain

Discomfort hinders your abilities
your face in a permanent wince
as you sit, stand, walk, sleep.
You start to anticipate your next dosage of pills
and wonder how bad it would be to overdose.

I've had a pretty rough week. I hurt my back on Sunday, right before I babysat three cute toddlers. I swallowed some pills, swallowed the pain, and took them for ice cream. I couldn't get to the doctor until Thursday. My friend Google informed me that indeed I could take ibuprofen and acetaminophen together. The days were okay, except sitting hurt and standing hurt because of the sitting. The nights were bad, not being able to find a comfortable position, and the excruciating pain of standing up in the morning.

Today I went to the doctor. I am beginning to feel better. He gave me a shot for the pain. It's helping somewhat.

I claim to have a pretty high threshold for pain. I barely flinch at shots, or giving blood. But when your body is in pain, it shuts down. Suddenly every task that used to be so simple, like walking up the stairs, is agony. You just want to wrap yourself in a blanket and drown out the world. You want the pain to go away. You move slower. I'm usually a fast walker, but every step sent a shooting pain down my leg. I was cold. I wore a sweater when it was hot out.

B"H it is getting better. Hopefully by next week I will be back to normal. It is hard having physical limitations.

I know I am probably way late in the game, but thanks to modern technology, I downloaded a siddur app on my phone, as well as a tehillim and the chabad.org chittas app. (I kind of wondered how it works if you bring your phone into the bathroom. I suppose if the app is not open then it's not a problem.)

This might make me sound lazy, but in my life I do things by convenience. If it's not hard, then why not. I recently made a hachlata to begin saying the daily portion of tehillim every day. Then I kind of added on chumash and tanya, making it the complete portion of daily chittas. Since I have the siddur app, I figured why not daven on the train on my way to work, since I have free time. I realized that I have free time in my life when I make the time, and it is so easy to work spirituality into your life if you just try.

My high school alumni made a tehillim group for the safety of Israel. I took some tehillim upon myself, and my tehillim app has a setting where I can save 'my chapters' so it is easier to say. Feel free to join the group, round 2 is already filling up.

The title of this post is in reference to Hamlet. If you have never read Hamlet, (I don't blame you), Hamlet says this line about his mother and he is basically saying that he thinks she is a weak person and she has no backbone. (That's as much context as I can give without summarizing the whole play.) I find is kind of rude that he assigns the word frail to an entire gender. I am here to say that women are not frail. Sometimes we choose to be weak. That doesn't make us weak. You must find it within yourself to be strong. And you will be strong.

I can find the time for prayer even in the midst of pain. And when I say even, I should add that that is the most important time to pray. Do you see the irony of saying, I'm in pain so I don't feel like davening right now? Rather, daven so that the pain will go away.

If this doesn't make sense, I blame the shot my doctor gave me. No idea what was in it.