less pain than usual

I live near a large research hospital that gets, or at least used to get, more Federal funding for research than any other hospital the entire USA. As a person with a spinal cord injury suffering from chronic pain, I am in modest demand as a research ‘guinea pig’. I participate in a study or two every year which means I fill out some surveys and go over to the UWMC for some sort of non-invasive procedure such as hypnotherapy or meditation.

Today I went to the UW’s sister hospital Harborview for testing. I wore a skullcap to get a baseline EEG, traded that for biofeedback electrodes in an effort to change my Alpha and Beta brainwaves, did another EEG and left. It took two hours to complete the process—which is longer than any of the other study procedures I have done in the past.

By the time I was done, my chronic pain was greatly reduced and I felt refreshed. I don’t know if that was all placebo effect or the result of the biofeedback. Undoubtedly it was some combination of the two—I can’t tell effect resulted in greater pain relief. Either way, it felt really good to be sitting up in my wheelchair while having almost no pain.

Six-ish months ago, my neighbor opened a restaurant serving East African food in Columbia City. I finally made it over to the restaurant today, only to find out it was closed “due to circumstances beyond her control” per the note on the door. Jane works really hard at several jobs and I would have liked to have patronized her restaurant. I will buy some catered food from her sometime.

I got two free cookbooks from America’s Test Kitchen courtesy of my sister. I don’t have cable TV and rarely watch broadcast TV and never watch an entire show start to finish. I can’t stand the commercials. ATK is my favorite show to watch on broadcast TV due to their relatively simple recipes, excellent explanations of the cooking process, corny humor and informative style. Now I have two cookbooks in my cookbook library!

Positive thinking has a lot of control over pain reduction instead of simply being a victim of painful circumstances. My attitude has changed incredibly for the better this past year thanks in great part to writing about gratitude.

I am grateful for a good day and an afternoon experience that proved there are ways for me to sit in my wheelchair with less pain that I have existed with for years.