My belly hurts. I’m not sure why. It feels like I haven’t moved my bowels in weeks; full in my bowels, bladder, and stomach. But that’s not the case. I have shat like clockwork, my regular morning constitutional. All my functions are normal. It hurts to have sex. It hurts to sit down. It hurts to urinate.

I made an appointment with my doctor, but worry about what this might actually be. I’ve had nothing but worrying appointments with him lately. Orange-like skin on the top of my right breast. I thought not much of it. A quarter-sized patch, what could it be? My hormones have been all out of whack, it must be that.

So I go to the doctor’s, and he terrified me, instantly sending me to the hospital for further testing. I wait two days, it’s a long weekend, nothing. I wait three days. Nothing. That must be good news? Still waiting on further tests to confirm, but they are pretty sure from the original scans it’s not inflammatory breast cancer, so that’s a positive.

Still. Three days is too long to wait for news. Too long not to know whether you might die.

Well, we will all die, but die early.

My body is falling apart on me. Menopause hitting me like a ton of bricks. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. My shoulders hurt. My back hurts. Everywhere I’ve previously broken aches when it rains. What is it going to feel like when I’m 80 if it’s this bad before 50?

I think about my class readings. Pain being a combination of emotional response and physical sensations. Body-mind connection. The way our brain interprets pain impacts how our bodies feel it.

Chocolate cake. Ice cream cake. 1-2-3-4-5. Calm, lakeside beauty. I focus my brain on desserts, grounding, going to my happy place. All the distractions that help remove the pain. I once survived three broken bones and surgery with no pain medication. Progressive muscle relaxation and meditation proving helpful, but not really enough.

I pull out my Shakti mat. Its plastic spikes dig deep into my back and spine. As I lay on top of the spikes, my pain dissipates. My brain so focused on the pain in my back it forgets about the pain elsewhere. Then the pain in the back turns into dull numbness, then nothing. I nearly fall asleep.

If only there was a Shakti mat for my brain.

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