While just starting to meditate, I could not get rid of thinking about the pains I was feeling in my body.
I had a major operation in May and am still suffering some aftereffects, including pain in my left side where a 12-inch incision was made to operate on an aneurysm. I was in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for six days.
During the operation and the recuperation, I noticed that the upper section of my right thigh was painful. I had no idea what was causing it until I remembered lying in the hospital bed on that side uncomfortably while my entire body was shifted so the surgeon could get to the left side and cut away.
I got bed sores!
But that’s not the moral of this story. While focusing on the pains in the different sections of my body, I searched for other parts that were giving me pain. Such as my lower left back where I injured myself at age 21 when jumping from an airplane at the US Army’s Jump School. I was supposed to roll, but I landed flat on my feet with my body taking the impact injuring my back.
The other painful body part is the left side of my neck. Don’t know what caused the discomfort over the years but I have been treated by acupuncture for it.
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No, while meditating I began to feel thankful that I only had those four areas of pain in my body. I had done an entire body scan like guided meditations tapes suggest you do and I found nothing but comfort and ease from my feet and ankles, most of my legs, hip, and back as well as the stomach, chest, and entire functioning parts of my head (eyes, ears, and nose.)
I am 74 years old and am willing to bet a lot of people over 65 probably have a lot more painful parts than I do. I feel grateful that I have only those few parts to complain about and am hoping the pills I am currently taking for the bed sores and the rest I am taking before seeing my urology surgeon next month will ease those hospital pains.
Gratitude is a good thing to have no matter what age or ailment you may have. Try it the next time something painful comes up.
Contoveros 
Great way to turn pain into gratitude! 🙏
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Thanks. I feel better each time I focus away from one and onto the other!
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I am so glad that this technique resonates with you, just like it did with me. Gratitude friend🙏👍
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Hey Michael, thanks so much for talking about this! Being thankful is such a wonderful, healthy and IMO necessary thing to do. It’s way too easy to fall down a rabbit hole of (legitimate) complaint and darkness. I know; I’ve been there way too often.
Wish I could say I now practice gratefulness every day, but I often don’t. The days it happens though are just the best days ever, so I try to think of things to be thankful for, whenever it occurs to me.
Yesterday for example was just the best: my daughter was in town and we were just hanging out and having a wonderful time, on a very warm summer day here in Toronto. She had gone ahead of me to Starbucks so later, as I walked to join her, I told Gaia how much I loved her, how great and beautiful and terrible and wonderful she is – and the gratitude just was almost palpable. I could feel it, you know. The joy that welled up was tremendous.
And of course, a little later, I noticed a tiny bird hop-scotching around my table while I sat still. Coincidence? Maybe. I didn’t care. Seeing the little guy just put a big smile on my face.
Daughter asked me about a pain I’d been having in my shoulder. And then she reacted when I had a sudden sharp pain in my back. She wondered what was going on, and I started laughing. “Sweetheart, there’s no sense in paying attention to it; everything seems to be not working the way it should” I didn’t want to dwell on it. There was just too much else to enjoy. She smiled and we talked about other things.
My friend I too am grateful you only have four immediate pains to consider. Truly wish it were less. Hope those pills help with the bedsores too.
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I always cherish your insight into so many things over the past ten years or so that we have been WordPress friends and allies. Ups and downs will occur but it is so a relief to engage in an activity that brings you joy like spending time with your wonderful daughter and, in my case, my five-year-old grandson and three-year-old granddaughter.
The bird you described landing near you sounds like a mystical sign, or what my first wife from Louisiana would call a “Lenyap,” which is a Cajun term that means “a little something extra!”
I started taking the new meds but have experienced a bunch of bumps and rashes that are itchy like crazy. I will be seeing a dermatologist for some help but hell, it’s just another pain to add to the few ones I already have. I am grateful that I have some cream to help the itch and that has been a big help.
As you say in your message which I am paraphrasing here: “There is way too much to enjoy.”
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The following comments were exchanged on Facebook:
Bill Reinecke
Brilliant. May your pain ease, Michael J Contos.
Contoveros:
Just hearing from my old journalism buddies helps soothes many of the ailments. It’s been a long time since thinking of the Pottstown Mercury Newspaper but it definitely brings back so many pleasant thoughts. Thank you.
Bill Reinecke
I am in your debt. This morning, early, short on sleep, I was having anxiety, terror, and my usual coping ways abandoned me. I remembered your post and asked, Are my toes anxious? And moving along I made fascinating discoveries about this misnomer, anxiety, and then fell sound asleep for three more hours. Thank you deeply for giving me a lovely day today, Michael.
Contoveros
Cool man. Focusing on something other than the problem and being appreciative of whatever that is can draw your attention away from cares and worries and simply feel good about the good things you got.
Bill Reinecke
Thank you. You seem to have experience with this.
Bill Reinecke
I don’t think I knew you’d been in combat when we worked together. Yes? And then you became an attorney? I’m very much a meditator: don’t leave home without it. Everyone is different I hypothesize, and we have different emotional traits and burdens. I started meditating as a boy and then regularly in college. Where I’m at is that meditating isn’t “enough” and yet I’d be in the mental institution without it. So maybe it is enough – to keep me out of the nut house.
Contoveros
Meditation saved me from the nut house too. I was a combat infantry platoon leader who served a year in the Vietnam War after being drafted and talked into going to Officers Candidate School by my oldest brother who was in the Army.
No one was killed under my command but five grunts were wounded when they were hit by mortar fire by our own Army. There was an investigation and the first lieutenant (me) was charged with the accident and I was relieved of my position. I got another platoon shortly after and had no further problems for the rest of my tour.
I didn’t know I had PTSD until some 25 years after the war and I went out on disability when I also suffered from caregiver burnout. I was taking care of my wife after she suffered a traumatic injury from a fall and I was working full-time as a public defender trying a shit-load of cases in front of a Philadelphia defense-oriented judge.
I needed a “life-preserver” of some type at the time and meditation provided it for me more than 10 years ago. I have been practicing it and even writing about it on my Blog. I hope to self-publish a book with a series of stories about the practice and some crazy mystical experiences I have experienced.
Bill Reinecke
Oh my. Good for you Michael. Oh, life!
Bill Reinecke
So you went into law after the mercury? Did you know they are down to just one reporter? You never talked about Nam in Pottstown I don’t think. I have the utmost sympathy and respect for what you went thru. It is nearly unimaginable to me what so many young men, meaning survivors, have lived thru.
An unconscionable war and having to fight it and then lose it. Oh god. Have you watched Ken Burns on Vietnam? And Oliver Stone’s series The Untold History of the US? And do you know about EMDR, psilocybin, and The Work of Byron Katie? Probably. And if you have any suggestions for me, let me know. I’m so sorry all that happened to you and I treated you shabbily when we worked together. I’m sorry Michael.
Contoveros
I took a photo of the front door of the Mercury bout two years ago when I was in Pottstown and cherish nowadays. Yes, I read that there was only one reporter. I also have seen pictures on Facebook of Bill and Nancy March, who ran the paper for a number of years.
I have tried to watch some of the TV shows about the Vietnam War, but I got too many flashbacks on seeing it all again. I got treatment for PTSD but was not a good candidate for EMDR.
Don’t worry about how people treated each other at the paper. I got into a squabble with Frank Warner when he was promoted to editor, and I remained a reporter.
I got heavily involved in the union former the Ingersoll group of some 10 newspapers and published a newsletter.
In addition, I took a leave of absence to work as a union organizer for The Newspaper Guild, trying to get papers from Atlantic City to West Chester and even Reading to form unions. We had an NLRB election at the Reading Eagle/Reading Times and lost.
That is when I decided to go to law school to become a labor lawyer. That is until I got a D+ grade in a labor law class and decided to go into criminal law where I got a C+ average and ended up working for the Dean of Temple Law School who encouraged me to become a public defender in Phila.
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Cyndi Smith
It is so nice not to feel all the pain!
Contoveros:
Yeah, Cyndi, focusing on something that’s “not all the pain” is a real comfort!
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Calliope Joy
…And again beautiful written words that radiate humility, gratitude, and grace. I will be keeping you in my prayers for total healing and no pain. Thank you for always sharing your gift of writing.
Contoveros
Dear cousin Calliope, I don’t know if I will ever get to the point of “no pain” but I believe “less pain” is available and I thank you for the prayers for total healing from the operation. There is no fun in spending six days in a hospital following an operation!
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Yeah, like I’ve said before on this blog, I’m from an Army family. Apart from my brother there was my sister (medic), my step-brother (combat engineer) and my brother-in-law (AFV recovery). Lisa was the only one who didn’t serve in combat but, IMHO, she did the best work, especially after she left the Army and started treating vets with PTSD and related psychological conditions.
Despite my committed anti-war stance I tried to enlist in the Army Reserve in the period immediately after the Vietnam war when it would have been electoral suicide for an Australian government to sign up for another US war, but my autoimmune conditions qualified me for what Americans call ‘4F’ status.
Unfortunately the reluctance of our leaders to support US imperialist wars contrary to Australian national interests only lasted until 1990 when our then PM, Bob Hawke, enthusiastically joined George Bush’s Gulf War (it’s since been revealed Hawke was a US intelligence asset), so my siblings other than Lisa all did stints in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
In 1975 the US government engineered a constitutional coup against one Australian government for failing to toe their militarist line and has corrupted every one since with threats, bribes and planted operatives to ensure our obedience. Like Kissinger said, “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”.
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Can’t believe Kissinger said that but from the history you share here about your beloved country Australia and what the US did to it scares the hell out of me.
It’s the American Way I was taught to believe in and go to war rather than flee to Canada to a void the draft in the 1960s.
You sure got a lot of family members who put themselves in harm’s way for your country. My oldest brother was what they call a “lifer” when he served 22 years in the US Army.
He went to Vietnam as a combat engineer and died at the age of 55 suffering cancer he got from Agent Orange.
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You’ll find the quote all over the web if you google it, so if HK didn’t say it he’s been comprehensively misrepresented.
My Dad was a right-wing Ayn Rand fan who was 100% behind the Vietnam war and flatly refused to entertain the possibility America might lose right up to the point it did, whereupon he started finding ‘traitors’ to blame. But as I got closer to conscription age he told me he’d spoken to friends in New Zealand (which fought in Vietnam but had no conscription) who’d take me in until the war was over so I wouldn’t get drafted. He also made me promise to tell no one (he’s dead now so I think that releases me from the promise).
Kurt Vonnegut’s son Mark was one of those who fled to Canada to avoid the draft, also with the assistance of his father.
Sorry to hear about your brother.
When I was in Vietnam in 1990-91 they were still suffering high rates of cancer and birth defects attributed to the various coloured ‘Agent’ herbicides dropped all over the country. Locals were of the view ‘Agent White’ was the worst because it was targeted specifically at paddy fields to try to starve suspected VC sympathisers into submission (a war crime of course). Over half the rice production areas in Vietnam were contaminated but the country couldn’t afford to decontaminate or abandon them, so picloram (the primary carcinogen in Agent White) was still getting into the food chain 15 years later. Picloram doesn’t substantially degrade over time.
In the early 80s there was a major cancer cluster in South Carolina attributed to the commercial version of Agent White, which was being used heavily in forestry and had got into the ground water many rural people used for drinking.
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Unbelievable history here.
I am just glad I was never wounded or came in contact with Agent Orange. I did get PTSD but didn’t know I had it until some 25 years after the war. I went out on disability years later and started writing this Blog under my father’s name of Contoveros.
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One of the things I found most dispiriting about the history of Agent Orange was how the early 1980s Royal Commission into its effects on Australian veterans panned out.
Sir Richard Doll was a British epidemiologist who shot to fame for his groundbreaking early 50s research definitively linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer. He subsequently proved similar links between asbestos and lung cancer, radiation exposure and various cancers and alcohol and breast cancer.
At the request of the Commission he submitted evidence regarding links between Agent Orange and cancer in which he surprised everyone by ruling out any substantial connection. All the other medical experts advising the Commission took the opposite view but Doll’s standing was so high it found there was no proven link between Agent Orange and cancer and the veterans were denied compensation payments for their exposure.
After Doll’s death his papers revealed he was receiving $1500 a day from Monsanto over the period of the inquiry which he failed to declare. Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange.
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No connection, you say?
No need to offer treatment at a government-run facility for those exposed to Agent Orange.
The same thing happened in the United States and, unfortunately, was upheld by some of one of our most helpful VA directors who lost both limbs in the Vietnam War. Politics and concern for the newly injured exposed to bad stuff while in war zones usually lead to very little help for those who placed themselves in harm’s way.
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I love that you’re 74! What a wonderful cool spirit to turn around and be grateful while you’re dealing with pain anyways! I’m sorry you’ve had to have some surgery and are going back for something else, but I know it’ll be okay! I was trying to explain to my favorite 14-year-old, that as you get older things change, some for the better and some things just require adjustments. I wouldn’t change a thing. But I think getting older is a privilege and since my mom died at 49, I’m not confused at all by that! But it sure would be nice to have all this life wisdom and the hardcore body of my 20s! I did not appreciate that gift at all back then.
On a side note, I have the neck thing too — for me, it’s sleeping on my side and not having the perfect pillow, maybe? I’m not sure, but it’s a thing nowadays. So, I may try acupuncture for it. Thank you for the idea.
I’m starting my morning in gratitude. Thank you for the gift, reminder. 💕
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Thanks for the tip on the pillow. I have two that I used to prop me up while I am in bed watching television at night. I may lay on them occasionally but spend most of the time resting my head on a three-inch pillow I got on sale from Five-Below. Neither device is actually good for my neck.
So, I will talk to one of the doctors at the VA Hospital to see if they can recommend a pillow to ease the pain in my neck. I promise I will not buy anything from the Pillow Guy!
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🤣😆(The Pillow guy!) 😆🤣
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BTW, I’ve been a meditator – on and off – since my early teens. I’ve also got a couple of genetic autoimmune conditions that mean I’ve pretty much always got uncomfortable inflammation happening somewhere in my body (the ankylosing spondylitis in the spine and iritis in the eyes are the worst). So I thought being embodied with my aches through meditation had taught me all about it. I was wrong.
What really taught me about the pain I was living with but holding out of my awareness was heroin. The first time I used it was the first time lots of bits of me stopped hurting, but I’d made myself unaware of it until it suddenly stopped.
Needless to say it didn’t take me long to get addicted. Then the inevitable withdrawals really taught me where my pain lives. And it’s not just in the body. We adapt by refusing to recognise chronic emotional pain as well. Until we’re forced to acknowledge it.
William Burroughs famously said “No matter what ails you, heroin makes you feel better”. What he neglected to mention is the respite is just a loan you have to pay back with interest.
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Wow. I did LSD, speed, and marijuana but never took the heroin, but one of my brothers did and so did a close friend of mine. Neither got addicted.
Meditation can help take our minds away from the pain while focusing on nothing but the calm that you can create while focusing on “nothing.” I believe it is akin to the Buddhist teaching of trying to achieve “Nothingness” while meditating.
Emotional pain can monopolize our thoughts as well and I find most of it occurs while lying in bed at night trying to sleep and worrying about every bad thing that has occurred or could occur in the future. I try counting to ten ridding myself of all thoughts and I start to feel better when I reach the number 20. Sleep then takes over if nothing else is bothering me.
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I don’t regret any of my drug use. It all taught me something; smack more than most. But the psychedelics like LSD are in a class of their own. They unteach you a whole load of stuff that gets between you and everything else.
It’s only over the last few years the mainstream has started to rediscover the value of psychedelics after Nixon demonised and outlawed them in 1970. Authorities back then attributed a lot of resistance to the Vietnam war to psychedelics and there was probably something to that.
For a while there the CIA thought they’d be the greatest brainwashing tool ever, but they soon discovered they were more effective as an anti-brainwashing tool. And naturally Defence tried to weaponise them. They even invented their own very nasty variant – BZ – which they tested in Vietnam on both US soldiers and VC. The plot for the movie Jacob’s Ladder was inspired by one such test.
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Wow – sounds like Timothy Leary was really on to raising everyone’s consciousness with a few tabs of ever now and then.
One of my favorite actors did LSD at least 500 times in his later life. Cary Grant took ‘em with a therapist as his guide. He ended up marrying a girl he was more than twice the age of her.
Wish I could get some today.
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When my brother trained for helo-casting he managed to hit a deflated Zodiac face-first and shattered his jaw. At least the AIF surgeons did a good reconstruction job. He looked a godawful mess just after it happened but he’s never complained about residual pain and he didn’t end up any uglier than he’s always been.
In his 16 years in the Army, including several combat deployments, that was easily the worst injury he got. The second worst was when he got mugged during R&R in Japan.
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I salute you and your brother. Sixteen years in the Army with several combat employments gets my salute. Sorry to hear about the broken jaw while he was helo-casting the mugging in Japan. I bet he is grateful for the work performed by the AIF surgeons.
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