Orange Story: Side Effects

The side effects began.  I was taking my MS medicine twice a day.  After about a week, the side effects I read about starting making themselves known. 

I had conferences at school.  Conferences meant that I spent the day teaching, then spent the following 4 hours meeting with parents.  Under normal circumstances conferences are tiring.  I was feeling exhausted from conferences then I started having flushing and stomach aches all at once.  I never knew what flushing was until it began.  It feels like your face is on fire.  Sometimes it spreads to your chest.  I felt so poorly I cried.  I was breaking.

The biggest problem was I had to keep teaching.  I couldn't stop and take a break.  I couldn't walk away and gather myself.  I had to keep going for the sake of 25 third graders.  The side effects eventually subsided, but the exhaustion didn't. 

I stayed down the following day.  I was confident my body would get used to this medicine, but in the meantime this was tough and I felt miserable. 

How many times does the solution cause pain?  I know side effects are common with medication.  Medication is supposed to help us, but in the meantime it can also hurt, then we need more medication to help the new hurts. 

How often is the solution to other things in our lives painful?  The solution to a tricky relationship is giving something of ourselves that we aren't used to giving.  The solution to a trying job may be finding a new job or committing to completing difficult tasks.  There is always a little pain or discomfort in the solutions.  Sometimes the pain comes during the time it takes for the solution to finally relieve us.

Eventually, we get used to the pain or we adapt to it.  Not everyone has to deal with side effects of necessary medication, but everyone has to wait for solutions to all of the problems that try to take us down.  We can do it.  We can overcome all the side effects that come our way.  We may simply need to be flexible.