I will not be brought down by my pain

Lower back pain has been a problem for me as long as I can remember.  My massage therapist tells me I have a high tolerance for pain, which can be both a good and a bad thing.  Lately it's been more of a bad thing because I ignored pain in my knee for about 2 or more months.  If I had actually gone to a doctor and had it looked at, I may not be in the state I'm in now.  

There have been very few times in my life when I've experienced pain great enough to make me cry.  Each time I've been in labor I've cried, the last time I really threw my back out I cried, and for the last four days I've been crying.  I honestly didn't know my knee was as bad off as it was, but man is it letting me know now.  There have been times over the past few days when (much like migraine pain) I just want to slam the knee into a wall to make it quit hurting. I did go into the version of an ER we have at Langley AFB where they put me on crutches.  :-/  This only made it worse - creating spasming in my lower back.  

But really, the point of this whole post isn't to point out how pitiful I am and how much my life sucks.  Because it really doesn't.  The pain I am experiencing right now is only a small part of my life, and really I have a pretty darn good life.  We may not make a ton of money, but we have enough to pay our bills.  All of our kids (even the 1.5 million dollar baby) are healthy little hellions who keep me busy every day.  The internship site I'm working at is WONDERFUL and I couldn't ask for a better place to learn how to use my counseling skills.  Donald and I are getting along better now than we have in YEARS (with the exception of dealing with the Borg Queen, but I'll take what I can get).  There's a short story I've written that has the potential to become a publishable novella (hello dream!)  Over the last year while Donald was TDY to Guam I made a TON of new friends on Twitter, which is really awesome for me because I'm so very introverted it's really difficult for me to be around loads of people.  Lots of my Twitter friends are what I consider "real" friends because they aren't too faced, they don't judge, and they accept me for the accomplished mess that I am ;-)  And...I have possibly the best parents on Earth who are literally dropping everything to come back here and take care of my kids while I'm laid up.  (I'm going to be really sad when they take the kids back to KY early, but it's awesome that my parents can do that!)

So even though I'm in pretty severe pain right now, my life definitely doesn't suck.  And I refuse to be brought down by my pain.