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Concealing The Shadows Of Illness and Pain

I’ve never been big on wearing makeup. I was a tomboy growing up so enhancing my looks – as most teen-aged girls did – wasn’t something I had a lot of interest in until I was in my twenties, and started to care about my appearance and my appeal to the opposite sex. Even when I started to invest more time in my appearance, I didn’t wear a lot of makeup. I wore the bare minimum because I didn’t like the look or feel of too much product on my skin. I covered up blemishes with a bit of foundation, applied a small amount of eye-makeup – usually without mascara to avoid racoon eyes – and a pale shade of lipstick or coloured lip balm. It usually took less than 10 minutes to “put on my face” before I went out, which I felt was more than enough time for me to preen in front of the mirror each day.

On weekends or days when I didn’t work, I didn’t feel the need to wear makeup. I didn’t bother to put anything except moisturizer and lip balm on my face when I went out. It always felt like too much work to put so many products on my face if I didn’t have somewhere to go. Why spend so much time outlining my eyes if I was only going to the grocery store? Who would care if I didn’t’ perfectly pluck and pencil in my eyebrows? What difference would it make if the apples of my cheeks didn’t’ have the rosiest shade of an artificial blush? Not to mention how often I absentmindedly rubbed my eyes, chin, or forehead and smudged colours together or on my clothes.

Lately, because of my illness, my feelings about makeup are changing. The dark circles under my eyes from a lack of sleep, the washed-out colour of my skin from anemia and too little sunshine, and the breakouts caused by my medications make it obvious that I’m not well. I know how vain that sounds, but I don’t like looking sick all the time. The way I look is starting to affect my mood and because I can’t make myself better overnight, I decided to do the next best thing: invest in some makeup to camouflage the effects of my illness. After watching some videos online – and realizing that I know very little about makeup products or how to apply them – I decided to get some expert advice about what products I should use to look less sick.

This weekend I had an eye-opening experience that has changed my opinion about makeup forever. When I went to the drugstore to restock some toiletries and over-the-counter medications, I made a stop in the cosmetics department. I asked the sales associate what she would recommend to hide the dark circles that are ever-present under my eyes. She asked me how much coverage I wanted. I told her I want as much as I can get while still looking natural. She looked at me under the harsh fluorescent lights for a moment then went to grab a couple of tubes of product. One was a concealer the other was a BB cream. I’ve never used either product before.

Concealer

The sales associate tried the concealer first. She matched the shade as close to my skin colour as possible. She put a few small drops on a makeup sponge and dabbed it on the skin below my lower eyelids then blended it into my skin with a small makeup brush. A few minutes later, I was stunned when I looked at myself in the mirror. The dark circles under my eyes were barely visible. My friend R was with me and could hardly believe the transformation. I finally stopped looking in the mirror long enough for the sales associate to put the BB cream on the rest of my face. When she finished, my face looked flawless and healthier than it has for a long time. The sales associate described it as a “dewy” glow. I like the word dewy. It makes me think of fresh fruit.

I left the drug store looking and feeling brighter with the help of a couple of tubes of makeup. The improved colour of my skin – even if it came from a tube and washes off – was all that was necessary to convince me to buy something. I bought the concealer because on its own it made a huge difference. Reducing the appearance of the dark circles under my eyes took five minutes and it made me look healthier instantly. If I decide I want the complete “dewy” look, I can always pick up the BB cream later. Now I have to teach myself how to apply the concealer so I get the same results I paid for, which isn’t a big deal when I think about how great five minutes of effort can make me look.

 

Colbie Caillat – Try

The Pain Of Paying For Help When You Have Pain

When I became ill, I had to let go of my neat freak habits because it’s not easy to clean everything and have everything in its place when you’re constantly in pain. Being a neat freak is ingrained in me from growing up in households where everything had to be perfect and daily chores were a standard part of my existence. When I was a teenager, I had to reserve a chunk of my weekend time for cleaning, not just my room, but also parts of the common areas of our home. I couldn’t’ relax until I completed my part of cleaning up. That habit stuck with me when I moved into my own home, and it took a lot of unlearning for me to realize I didn’t have to live such a regimented life. Although I’ve loosened up over the years, I’m still very particular – if not outright anal retentive – about how I like to have things done. In fact, I used to find cleaning therapeutic. Sometimes to clear my head or work through a problem I would pick an area to organize or a room to clean. Working out my frustration on bathroom tiles or piles of laundry felt productive and kept my place neat and spotless, and distracted me from worry or stress for the time that my focus was on eliminating dirt. I always felt better and clearheaded after cleaning. Now cleaning makes me feel more pain.

For the past few years, I’ve had to rely on friends and family to help keep my home tidy. I’ve had to learn to be gracious when someone cleans or organizes something in a way that I would never do it. I’m grateful to have clean clothes and clean sheets on my bed, but sometimes I feel myself being critical of how other people clean things or how they put sheets on my bed – not everyone makes hospital corners. I’ve had to stop myself from re-stacking dishes that weren’t put in the cupboards the way I like to see them, which reminded me of a guy I dated years ago who deliberately misplaced things to see if I would rearrange what he had helped to put away. What do you think I did? I definitely didn’t find it funny that he did that to test me. However, I believe it’s a different story when I’m paying someone to do my housekeeping. I should be able to give instructions and point out if something isn’t done to a professional standard. On Monday, I booked someone for three hours to clean and do laundry for me. It was a woman I had booked through a cleaning service a few times before. She now works independently because the cleaning service shut down before the end of last year, and I thought it would be good to have someone familiar with my needs return to my home to help me. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a washing machine and dryer in my home, so my clothes, towels, and sheets have to be taken to the laundry room on another floor. To make things move a bit faster I separated everything into loads ahead of time to make it clear what she could wash and dry together. I even pretreated some items with stain remover and let her know which clothes shouldn’t go into the dryer. She took my clothes to the laundry room, but didn’t’ follow my instructions. I figured this out the second time she brought the wrong clothes back to be hung up to dry. This forced me to have to go to the laundry room with her to sort out the mistakes. This was only the beginning of my displeasure. For some reason she decided to spend most of the scheduled time hanging out in the laundry room instead of returning to my place to clean while things were in the washing machines. When I realized how long she was gone, I called her to ask why she was hanging out in the laundry room. I couldn’t make sense of what she was doing because she had worked for me before and cleaned while the clothes ran through the wash cycle. Surprisingly, when she came back to my place, I actually had to remind her that my bathroom needed cleaning and the sheets on my bed had to be changed. Then she returned to the laundry room to put things in dryers. Again, she took her time returning to my place. When the three hours ran out, she hadn’t cleaned anywhere else, and some of my things were still in the dryer because she hadn’t taken all the dirty things out of my clothes hamper when she started my laundry.

By this point, I was in a lot of pain and so frustrated that I decided to pay her and tell her to leave. Later, I went down to the laundry room myself to pick up the last pieces of my laundry, and folded the other things she finished washing and drying earlier. My home was barely cleaner than when she arrived. She didn’t vacuum. She didn’t dust a single piece of furniture. She never stepped foot in my kitchen. She didn’t’ take out the garbage, not even the pile of paper towels she used while cleaning my bathroom, which didn’t include fully cleaning the toilet bowl or wiping the bathroom floor. I even had to remake my bed, not because I wanted hospital corners, but because of how sloppily she threw on the sheets, pillows, and duvet. Worse still, by the time I finished folding my things, I realized that some of my kitchen towels didn’t make it back from the laundry room, and when I went back to check for them they were nowhere to be found.

I’m still trying to understand how someone could believe it would be acceptable not to clean when that’s what I hired her to do. How could her work ethic and standards change so drastically since the first time she came to clean for me? How could she expect payment of the full rate for her time, which I did simply because I didn’t have the energy to argue with her? How could she lose my towels? I wanted answers to some of these questions so I sent her a text message on Tuesday asking her to phone me when she had some free time. She responded with a text on Wednesday, telling me she couldn’t talk to me. I’m sure she knows what she did, but in case she didn’t I sent her a detailed text message. I hope she’s happy with the money she took from me even though she didn’t earn it and with knowing that I’ll never book her again.

After I became ill, in spite of my severe pain, it took some convincing from friends and family for me to accept that I needed help and couldn’t do everything myself. It was even more difficult for me to agree to hire a stranger to come in to help me take care of my home because my illness is obvious, my pain medications sometimes make me drowsy and foggy, and I was nervous about being alone with someone I didn’t know. Now that this woman attempted to exploit my situation, I feel my lack of trust is justified. That being the case, I still need help but I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

 

The Beatles – Help!

Pain Clinic #8: Time For Acupuncture

I’ve been waiting for space to open in the pain clinic’s treatment rooms to start receiving acupuncture since the end of October and I was starting to think they had forgotten about me. The wait for an appointment was worrying my friends and family too, and some suggested that I should seek out an independent acupuncturist or naturopath to receive the treatments. Thankfully, I don’t have to go that route because I received a call yesterday from my pain specialist’s assistant with dates for a series of appointments that start in two weeks. I have four 60-minute treatment sessions booked with my pain specialist who is also a trained acupuncturist. Having her treat me with acupuncture, makes me feel more confident that the treatments will be successful because she knows my history with pain, knows exactly where in my body the pain originated and where it spread to, she has immediate access to all my medical records, and she can adjust my medications if necessary.

The breadth of my pain specialist’s knowledge and openness to alternative treatments for chronic pain, make me feel less anxious about trying something new. Years ago, I went to a naturopathic clinic as advised by a close friend to try something new for terrible migraines. The something new then was acupuncture. The naturopath who treated me would place needles under my skin in three or four areas of my body. After the first pinch of each needle faded, it was almost impossible to feel where they stood. With the needle placement completed, the naturopath would then dim the lights and leave me alone to rest for about 30 minutes. When she returned to remove the needles, I would feel as if I had rested for hours. Unfortunately, acupuncture didn’t rid me of migraines but that rested feeling would stay with me for a few days after a treatment; and the treatments did reduce the frequency and severity of my migraine episodes, which was a big improvement in my life.

The memory of the pain relief I gained because of those acupuncture needles is still with me. And I also remember that those fine, silver needles didn’t only target my migraines; they calmed my entire body, somehow quieted my mind, and even helped me sleep better. I am hoping for similar results from these upcoming acupuncture sessions because my entire nervous system needs calming. The way my doctors explain it to me, my nervous system is now like a hyperactive child who has eaten a bowl of sugar. It has run at that level for almost three years in response to the pain from a benign growth that no longer sits in my pelvis. This overdrive needs to stop, and acupuncture – I say this with fingers crossed – should help to slow it down.

 

David Bowie – Absolute Beginners