Hi dancinglady,

I am not very good with putting things into words these days but I want to share my thoughts with you from my own experiences.

Hope this comes onto paper as it is in my head.

I think about how things change from day to day, month to month and year to year in my life. How times that I thought I would never get through,... some how are things of the past. I made it through and found life can and does get better. There will always be new challenges to face, but we never know what tomorrow will bring unless we are here to greet it.

It took a very long time, but at the moment, my PN is under control. I went from excruciating pain that was 24/7 non-stop when nothing seemed to reduce the pain to having low levels of intermittent pain lately. (The past few months.) Yes, there is hope, and there are some success stories. I am not cured by any means and I know that those extreme levels can return at any moment but if I was not here, I would not have experienced the success I got from pain mgt.

I am dealing with MANY various health conditions, PN being only one of them but getting at least one under control has made life more bearable.

Where you see negativity in reading posts of unrelenting pain from PN, I see how much worse others are and how very fortunate I am that I do not have some of the various conditions of others here on NT.

Reading about others makes me feel blessed.

I could wake tomorrow and my PN could be back in full force but I want to be here each day to experience whatever the day has in store. You never know what tomorrow will be like until you are in it.

It is a difficult adjustment to go from being an active healthy person to a complete shut-in, with pain others could only imagine, unable to function in daily activities of life as simple as walking from one room in your home to another but you do adjust. It may not be the life you had or want, but it is the one you are living and the operative word is living.

I want to be around to see what tomorrow brings. But that is just the way I look at life.

There were times when I wanted to give up. I didn't think I could make it through certain events and pain in my life but I did and every time, I was glad I stuck around for the next chapter in my life.

Who knows, you could be reading a post from me tomorrow that is full of despair and pain but for the moment, I am blessed just to be alive. The friends here have helped me through some awful times and horrendous pain. I will just be happy that my PN is better for now and pain mgt. has tamed the beast for the moment. That gives me a chance to work on all the other issues that keep me bed-ridden so much of the time.