Fear

Fear is the great equalizer. Last week, I had 4, count them, 1-2-3-4, wonderful days. Then Saturday evening was only a little painful. Then Sunday was just slightly a bit more painful, but really nothing compared to a couple weeks ago. Then Monday totally stunk it up. My left testicle, above the teste, became hard and I thought I was going to have epididymitis again. I began to have a million thoughts run through my head - did the reversal fail after 13 months, would I have a painful week and need to go see a doctor, etc. Basically, fear set in.

Fear is the thing that I struggle with the most. The same questions I just asked, constantly swirl around in my head. Add to this the fact that I'm exhausted from coping with the pain, dealing with the pain, having to face the pain, pain, pain, pain....ugh! My frustration level has been quite high lately. I keep asking God to help me count it as joy, but that is easier to say than to do. Pain sucks. Fear sucks. Vasectomies suck.

I took some ibuprofen yesterday and laid down in bed. I also wore a jock strap, hoping that might keep the boys in place. I prayed and I read the Bible. First Peter is what I read. It helped a lot. My prayer was full of sobbing and asking for help to get through this latest pain. I texted my sister and asked her to pray.

When I got up from bed about 2 hours later, the hard thing in my testicle was gone. I had residual pain, but the ibuprofen was helping me with that. Today, I woke up and still felt sore. The pain was into my right thigh. I took some tylenol at lunch and now I feel pretty decent.

I hate that I'm becoming more dependent on the tylenol/ibuprofen. I wish I could go a month without using them. I wish I could get up and work out without having to worry about the painful consequences. I wish for a lot of things, but I'm left in the state I'm in.

So fear is what I'm dealing with now. Prayer seems to help, reading the Bible seems to help, sitting around with nothing else to think about - doesn't help. You see, fear gets trapped in the mind and tells you that life stinks. As I was reminded yesterday, life doesn't stink, just the post vasectomy pain thing-a-ma-jig stinks. Count your blessings when pain hits is what my sister told me to do. Don't let fear get a stranglehold on your thinking, because it can dominate.

Again, easier to say than to put into action. But I'm trying. God seems to be the only thing that can help me here. Not a bad bailout plan I guess. I just keep praying for things to get better. Please Lord, make them get better. Amen.