Don't presume to understand your body

This is some wisdom I could have done with right at the beginning of my illness. There's a kind of implicit assumption when we are well that we are in control of our body - we drink too much alcohol it feels rough, we take pills for pain, we exercise to make it fitter, we feed it, preen it and admire it in the mirror. It's our body. However, when it goes wrong we would do well to respect the healing process that it needs to go through - processes that can take years to complete. It's a hugely complicated organism and we would do well to leave it alone. The body is part of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath out conscious mind - it wears the accumulation of life on the inside. How? Why? Where? Who knows? Some things are not quite within our grasp.

Anyway, as I go through another healing process I am amazed to find the pain in my neck moving (after several days) into my shoulders (and then after weeks) blossoming across my whole back. Clearly, it has its own agenda, and I shouldn't presume to know what it will do next.