Paying for someone else's bad choices

Start writing...So why do I have to suffer for someone else's bad choices? I mean haven't I made enough of my own bad choices? I have no cualms paying for those, there my bad choices. But paying for another's? Not to mention the payment is unbearable and there not my choices!

Ok so without getting too windy you need to know some things about me. I was born (calm down I will just give you what you need to know to make since of this) 3 months premature. In 1962 babies born this early usually didn't survive. We didn't know then what we do now. They told my mom, at Bethesda, MD naval hospital where I was born, that I wouldn't survive the day. I didn't weight 2lbs at birth and not quite 4lbs when they let mom take me home 5 weeks later. The only reason they let her take me home then was she already had 5 children. Mom said about the birth,"it was like giving birth to a Barbydoll. They did dress me in dolls clothes. No premature clothes back then. Mom said the disposable diapers which was a new thing were a one size fits all affair. That they cut them in half and taped them and they were still to big.

My father, who could put my bottom in the palm of his hand and support my head with his fingers, said my lungs were so underdeveloped that I couldn't even cry. "You sounded like a sick puppy". Dad would say. He always added, as though one had anything to do with the other, "you were so little you slept in one of my dresser drawer because we were afraid you would fall through the slatts in the crib."

The first 3 years of my life I spent more time in the hospital than at home. I had all manner of health issues. Nothing being fully developed. My lungs of course the worst seeing thier the last to develop. Yet nothing was right even my muscles and bones. I survived but one thing I never grew out of. That is I can't remember a day free of pain. Not always did the same thing hurt but every day something hurts. Might be my legs one day and my neck or hands the next. Some days it would be a muscle pain. Other days it would be deeper like the bones themselves hurt. This has been the norm for my whole life as far back as I can remember.

I have good days and bad. A good day the pain is doable. Meaning I can deal w with it and function. Function normally enough so noone knows. This is good because I don't do well with pity. Nor can I the ridicule of being told I'm a lier.

Thankfully in the early years the the bad days, ones that I hurt so bad I can't make myself get out of bed, were few and far between. As I got older and with agrigating factors such as injury's and illness that come with life bad days become more frequent and more severe. Other things that seems to have agrivated this "condition" noone can tell me what it is. The ones who don't just call me a lier that is. Remember my bad choices I mentioned earlier. I dropped out of school the end of sophomore year my reasoning for this bad decision is for another story another time. I went straight to full-time work for my older brother in the construction industry. By the time I realized dropping out was not the best decision I ever made. It was too late to change my mind.

So with no education beyond 10th grade and now I had a family to provide for I did what was available then for a man in this situation. Which was unskilled labor. Now the other syblings in my family say I never did grow to full size. I mean I'm a puny 6' 140lbs. Even the girls are bigger than me. Well labor industry isn't kind to a big man without a malody such as mine.

I didn't go to the doctor whining about how I hurt. That's not how I was raised. I had a wife and children to provide for. I dropped out and hard labor work hurts. You go home at the end of the day,
you take a couple donz pills drink a couple beers eat dinner and go to bed. When the alarm goes off in the morning you get up and go to work and do it all over again. You helped to bring those babies into this world. Well actually I was just poking at her in fun, she's the one who got all blowed up about it. All jokes aside it's your responsibility to provide for them. This is not a complaint I love my children and would gladly do and sacrifice anything for them.

When it finally all catches up with me. Luckily my kids were all grown up by then, when you finally have to admit to yourself that you're not much of a man anymore and you can't do the hard labor 10-14 hours a day any longer.

I was medically retired and put on SSD at 50 years old. The reason listed on the SSD paperwork for my disability is CHRONIC pain. Now the dictionary definse chroic, persisting for a long time or constantly recouring, long lasting and difficult to eradicate. I take that as a fancy way of saying that the pain I have dealt with in my own way for my whole life isn't going anywhere anytime soon and there's not much anybody can do about it.

I didn't tell you all this to complain and get your sympathy. Here's the deal I'm setting here today 58 years after they told my mamma I wouldn't survive a day. I've been rode hard and put away wet for most of them 21,170 days. Today is a bad day. I'm sitting in pain so bad I can't move. I got nothing else to do but think. I'm thinking in this age with all the technology we have that there's no way anyone should be in this much pain for any reason at anytime. However because of other people's bad choices to abuse opioids and other pain medications I am judged a lier drug addict and there isn't doctor in the country that will prescribe me anything to help me. Even though several doctors examined me and all concluded that I suffer from to much pain to work anymore. That it's not going away and they can't fix it. Perhaps part of their thinking I'm just trying to get high is because I didn't go to the doctor whining my whole life.

The best part is a couple of the doctors that refuse to help me (which I believe is in violation of thier Hypochratic oath) are a couple of the doctors that diagnosed me with CHRONIC pain. Now try as I may can't figure that out any more than I can figure out why I'm paying for someone else's bad choices.

Just something to think about.

. Thomas Plourd