A Great Day

A really tough concept to explain is how you can have a really wonderful day while also being in terrible pain.

For those who do not live with severe pain 95% (give or take a few), it is really difficult to imagine someone laughing and smiling and making jokes if they are in excruciating pain.
It seems mutually exclusive.

It is not.

As tough as it is to picture, it is completely possible to have a really enjoyable day (several of them, in fact), full of fun and laughter and love and playfulness and genuine happiness ... while ALSO being in nearly unbearable pain.
Even sitting on death's doorstep, wondering when the pain is going to get bad enough to make you pass out, sometimes you can still crack a joke.
Every ambulance trip I have ever taken has been a mixture of vomiting, vomiting blood, difficulty breathing, and sometimes even worse, plus a couple of random jokes. On my absolute worst days, something will happen that makes me crack a smile.

For people who have chronic conditions that include severe pain, the pain is an every day occurrence. Don't mistake that for 'getting used to pain'. We get used to its presence, but sharp stabbing pains are nearly always sharp and stabby. Just because they happen every day don't make them feel less intense... we just get better at concealing how it affects us.
And just like any run-of-the-mill every day situation, there are going to be good and bad days.
So if you take someone who is in severe pain every single day, some of those days are going to be better than others.

Further to this whole idea - if someone asks me how I'm doing on a particular day, if I say:
"Today's been a really good day" or "I've had a great day today"... that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with feeling any better. Good health days and good days don't always go hand in hand. Good health days definitely have a better chance of being good days as well, but having a 'good day' doesn't necessarily mean that I 'feel better'.

Unfortunately, it is one of those situations where people won't really get it, unless they get it.
And I don't wish that on anyone.
I just hope that - just like if you study something but do not practice it - that people can attempt to learn and comprehend the theory behind it, even if they will not experience it first-hand.

Don't judge someone's level of pain by their smile. Or by their enjoyment of life. And, as always, appearing healthy doesn't mean squat.

I have more bad health days than good ....
But I have far more good days otherwise than bad.
It's kinda neat actually.