I recently read Paula Kamen's All in My Head: an Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache. It is an excellent memoir of a life lived with chronic daily headache, including traditional and alternative interventions, medical research, feminist theory, and personal experience. Most importantly, she addresses the struggle of living with chronic pain:
In this process of trying to live in the moment, we faced constant tensions and contradictions, many all at once: the struggle between pushing through the pain or ministering to it; the struggle to be dependent on others or stand on our own; the struggle to continue an expensive and time-consuming treatment or move on; the struggle to accept our disability while not overly identifying with it; the struggle to take responsibility for our health, but then not feeling guilty when the pain persists. And during this time, here is the real challenge: while we wait for pain to release its grip, we try not to put to rest of our lives on hold, and to manage to participate in other parts of life as best we can. (p. 274)
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