The Breaking Point

I write this as tears roll down my face.  I have gone through countless days and nights in pain and today is my breaking point.  The medication I'm on does not work.  They join the list of 30+ medications that I've been on over the years.  It might even be more - I've lost count.  What I haven't lost count of are the years lost to pain, opportunities missed, and events unable to attend.  Sleep is something that no longer refreshes me.  Instead I spend almost every night tossing and turning because the pain in my head is a constant woodpecker in my brain.  Stabbing and throbbing all through the night.  I wake up restless, defeated, fatigued, unmotivated, and still in pain.  And so continues my day.  Yes, I plow through the pain just to get things done.  The grocery shopping, trips to the bank, kids' doctor/dentist appointments - all can not wait until a pain-free day because there isn't one.  Clothes still need washing, chores need to be done, meals cooked - the list goes on and on.  Life never stopped because I had a migraine so neither can I.  But today, I want and need permission to break.  I can't hold it all together anymore.  I must say that those of us who suffer like this have the rare talent of withstanding pain to make life as normal as possible for the people we are responsible for.  But who is willing to stand up for us?  I so often feel as though I suffer in silence.  We have become guinea pigs for doctors, unapproved by insurance companies, and deniable by the Social Security Administration.  It truly sucks to be treated as a nuisance and not as a persosn with a legitimate disease.  So today I break down because I can't toughen up anymore.  How many times can a person go through expecting relief and never getting it?  It is cruel and unnecessary and most disturbingly an unrecognizable suffering.