This is Day 37 of the Positive 100, a countdown to Rare Disease Day 2014 and an exercise in being positive despite it all.

Pain is a cruel master that comes in all different forms. There are injuries and accidents that cause temporary pain. Chronic illnesses and diseases that cause incessant pain. Then there is the pain of the heart. All of these pains are very real and their implications on life vary.

But as cruel of a master that pain can be, it is also an excellent teacher. It shows us just how strong we are.

Pain took everything from me. I lost someone I thought loved me because the pain started to change my personality as well as left me as damaged goods in his eyes. I lost my ability to function as a normal adult. I had to move back with my parents because when the pain gets unbearable I cannot do much more than be alive. I no longer know what it is like to be unclouded by pain killers. I’ve lost friends. I’ve nearly lost jobs.

CRPS is soul-crushing pain — an unrelenting torture that is the post painful condition that exists (it beats amputation, child birth and cancer pain). And it nearly took my life away. Some days, I can still see it eating away at the corners of my life. The days that I stay home from work or have to be escorted through an airport in a wheelchair, I can see it hanging on and closing in.

Every day I get out of bed with purpose, I am saying “take that” to this disease. Each day that I work rather than wallow, I am taking a stand against pain. Each day that I do not let the pain stop me, I have bested my nerves. I fight with a host of weapons – medications and a spinal cord stimulator, walking and continuing to move and one very necessary positive attitude.

This is me on a day I beat the pain. A day I took my arsenal and said, “I win”. And a victory tongue sticking out moment.

I will never again let the pain steal my life, and I will keep pushing it back to the edges.

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