A test of my mettle

Tomorrow morning I am heading out with my brother, SIL, and niece to go stay at their house in Utah.  I'm going to stay for a bit to help out with my exuberant niece since my SIL is very sick, being pregnant and unimaginable miserable.  Just seeing her face today made we want to fix it and make it all better for her.  After all, I'm a fixer.

It will be good for me to break out of this self-centered routine and be able to help someone else for a change; I welcome this.

However...

I'm worried because this is going to be really, really hard for me.  Lately I've been having a hard time staying on schedule taking my pain medication.  And if you don't stay on schedule, you are playing catch up and that is a bad place to be.  It has been a bad place to be.  The pain situation this past week has made me really worried that I won't be able to do this, that I won't be of any help, and even worse, that I will be a burden.  That's all they need!

Don't get me wrong, I am excited about this, too.  I'll get tons of time to hang out with my brother and his family.  He's going to take me around Salt Lake City so I can get an idea of neighborhoods for when I officially move there.  And at their townhouse complex there is a pool!  I'll get to take my niece there and then later when I get a break, I will be able to bust out my Otterbox and goggles and maybe do some swimming!

I guess what I mean when I say this is a test of my mettle, is that I'm going to see what I'm made of in a situation that may get pretty difficult.  I've gotten so used to thinking of myself as limited, helpless, worthless, invalid.  Maybe I'll discover that is not actually the case.  That might be exciting.  It might also be kind of scary.

I'm trying to change the idea of who I am, my sense of self.  I want to move from "Chronic Pain Patient" to recovering chronic pain patient to woman who can do everything and anything.  Then is the ongoing test of my mettle.  The psychological component of this is so important.

I found this scale about how you feel each day as a chronic pain sufferer.  It's actually shocking and illuminating.  A little bit of a wake up call.

http://www.theacpa.org/uploads/Life_Scale_3.pdf

I'm going to try to get from a 4 to 5  (although if I am honest, I am sometimes at about a 3) to a 8 to 9.  Wish me luck.