I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1997. Since then, I have added osteoarthritis, degenerative spine disease, gastroparesis, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, and severe axonal neuropathy to my health resume, along with a plethora of debilitating symptoms that afflict me day and night.
Over the past thirty years, countless people have suggested I do this or that for pain; that they are sure if I will do ___________ that all or most of my pain will magically disappear. Anecdotes abound. I know a person who did __________ and their fibromyalgia went completely away! I know another person who took this or that supplement/magic food, and all their pain disappeared! And so the emails, texts, and social media messages say, day after day, month after month, year after year. Never mind what I want. They just KNOW that if I will follow their anecdotal proclamations, I will be healed.
What follows is a list of things I have tried for pain since 1997:
Prayer
Pleading with God
Asking others to pray for my healing
Pretending I am not in pain
Magnets
Genie massager
Chiropractor
Darvocet (removed from market due to causing heart problems)
Tramadol
Flexeril
Restoril
Amitriptyline
Lyrica
Guaifenesin (off label use)
TENS unit
Diet change
Exercise
Supplements
Hydrocodone
Gabapentin
Steaming hot baths (with magnesium epsom salts)
Distraction
Moved to Yuma, Arizona, hoping the weather would be good for me
Electric heating pads for legs, neck, and spine
Gel boiled water heating pads
Padded bed covering
Weighted blanket
Aspirin and Tylenol
Massage by Miss Polly, the sexy masseuse
Surgery
Therapy
Steroid and lidocaine injections
Physical therapy (a waste of time)
NSAID creams and patches (worthless)
Ambien
Gabapentin again
Flexeril again
Pain medications cut or removed per medical practice policy
Hit other body part to take away pain in extremity
Cannabis
Cymbalta (for neuropathy in legs)
Crying
During this time I read books about Fibromyalgia and chronic pain. I also saw more doctors than I can count: primary care doctor, rheumatologist, neurologist, multiple pain management doctors, and neurosurgeon. I’ve been seen by teams of doctors at the University of Michigan and Toledo Hospital. In 2007, I had a complete day-long work-up for multiple sclerosis (MS).
Here’s what has worked — so far:
Hydrocodone
Aspirin and Tylenol
Massage by Miss Polly, the sexy masseuse
Genie massager (a professional electric massager used in therapy/chiropractor offices)
Hot baths
Electric heating pads
Cymbalta (for neuropathy)
Cannabis (for sleep and nausea, doesn’t do much for pain, outside of helping me sleep)
Distraction (particularly cats, grandchildren, and writing)
As you can see, I have done what I can to alleviate my pain. The “miracle” jar is empty, and no cure is on the horizon. I fully expect to live the remaining days of my life in pain. It is what it is. I can accept that, though it seems other well-meaning people can’t. They are certain that if I will just listen to them and do ___________, my pain will markedly decrease or go away. Their “certainty” turns them into prophets of woo — a term used to describe beliefs involving pseudoscience, superstition, or magical thinking.
Want to help me? Continue to read my writing. Send me an encouraging email or message now and again. Comment on this blog. Donate (see, Bruce is in it for the money). Write a guest post. Promote my blog far and wide. Suggest to me subjects to cover with a blog post. Send Polly a note, thanking her for putting up with my shit. Bethany too. Both of them deserve better.
Thank you for your continued love and support.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted a meaningful post in nine days. Outside of my life partner, Polly, and my writing partner, Carolyn, I haven’t talked to family or friends about my current health status.
For new readers who may not know what’s ailing me, I am battling several diseases: gastroparesis (an incurable stomach disease that causes vomiting, nausea, satiation, weight loss); exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (a disease of the pancreas causing the insufficient production of digestive enzymes, leading to diarrhea, weight loss, and malnutrition); severe axonal neuropathy (a painful nerve disease in my legs and feet causing burning, numbness, and increased falls and injury); fibromyalgia (a chronic disease that causes widespread muscle pain/weakness and fatigue); osteoarthritis (a chronic degenerative disease affecting my joints causing pain and debility); degenerative spine disease (affecting my neck and spine causing pain and limited mobility); skin cancer (I have had five cancer surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, the last being surgery on my neck for melanoma three weeks ago). I am also being treated for high blood pressure and diabetes—both of which are well managed. My latest a1c was 5.8.
Of late, my pain levels have been impossible to manage. I could always take more narcotics—they work—but then I will spend my days unable to do anything other than exist and sleep. The rest of the stuff is out of my control. I regularly see my primary care doctor, take prescribed medications, eat properly, and sleep when I can. “Sleep when I can” means I sleep in short 1-3 hour blocks throughout the night, and then nap throughout the day. I am never not tired or fatigued.
Of late, I’ve been losing weight again. I have lost a total of 120 pounds. I’m down to what I weighed 30 years ago. I have little to no appetite, so eating has been reduced to “eating because I have too” unless I want to starve myself to death. My diarrhea and vomiting have gotten to the point that I fear going out in public lest I have an accident. Two weeks ago, I had an abdominal CT scan, with contrast. Down went the contrast, up came the contrast, in a waiting room of people. I was so embarrassed to make such a public scene. I’m a private person, so there’s the added psychological stress from embarrassing myself in front of others.
My daily life has come to a standstill. Three weeks of unopened mail sits on my desk. I haven’t filed our taxes—which I’ve done for 50 years. I contacted one local man about doing our taxes, but he wanted $250 to do them (W-2 wages, social security, one Schedule C for my blog income/expenses). That’s not going to happen, so I need a “good” day soon to file. Blog-wise, I haven’t answered reader emails in several months, and my writing output has declined 90 percent. Writing is one of the few pleasures I have in life, so I find the inability to do so distressing.
There’s no cure on the horizon. All doctors can do for me is help to manage my symptoms. There are days when I feel “this is it.” A week ago, for some unknown reason, my blood pressure dropped to 98/50, with a 120 resting pulse rate. I also had dangerously low blood sugar. I woke Polly up, stammering and unable to talk in complete sentences. She got me a Coke and some high carb junk food to eat, and my blood sugar rebounded to a low normal level. Polly took the day off of work to care for her dilapidated, but still s-e-x-y, man. Gotta have some humor, right? 😂
There are other problems I’m dealing with health-wise, but they are inconsequential compared to what I’ve shared above. I suspect it’s time to ask family to come in and help, but I find it difficult to make my problems theirs. They have their own lives to live. My family will say of me: “Bruce/Dad/Grandpa is a stubborn, prideful man who doesn’t like to ask for help.” When I was a strong buck, I was the master of my domain, but such is no longer the case. As anyone with chronic pain/health problems will tell you, one of the biggest problems to deal with is the inability to be self sufficient.
I hope to do some writing tomorrow. Of course, I’ve told Carolyn that every day for a week. Maybe Tuesday will be the day! 😂 I texted Carolyn earlier, “As you might have divined, rough days and nights lately. Still I hope, so tomorrow is another day to write.”
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Thirty years ago — I was thirty-eight — I pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio. As Polly and our children will attest, I was a busy preacher, a workaholic who rarely took time off from the ministerial grind. In the summer of 1995, I started feeling tired all the time. I wasn’t sleeping. My muscles ached. I wondered, “What is wrong with me?”
I sought out the care of a primary care doctor in Defiance, Ohio, who gave me a half-assed exam, drew no blood, and decided that my real problem is that I was depressed over my mom’s death FOUR YEARS EARLIER! That, of course, was so far from the truth that it wasn’t funny. I told this medical school reject that I wasn’t depressed. My body hurt, and I needed to figure out why.
The next year, I saw a primary care doctor in Bryan, Ohio. This man is still my doctor to this day. After months of examinations, tests, and research, he concluded that I have fibromyalgia. The past thirty years have proven this diagnosis to be true. Over the years, other diagnoses were added to my chart: gastroparesis, endocrine pancreatic insufficiency, osteoarthritis, and degenerative spine disease — all incurable. All doctors can do for me is treat my symptoms — to varying degrees of success.
There are other health problems that I have given up on. I have been to numerous specialists, each concluding that they don’t know what’s wrong with me. I asked one doctor what I should do next. All I got was a shoulder shrug and an “I don’t know.” My primary care doctor told me that I am an enigma to him. I am oh-so-special, right?
Americans want to believe that doctors are miracle workers. They are not. Skilled, competent practitioners of medicine? You bet. But miracle workers they are not. They all have patients like me, people they can’t do much for much for. This is especially true for chronic pain sufferers. I saw a neurosurgeon last week. More surgery may be on the horizon, though I am weighing whether I want to have it. I asked him about the severe neuropathic pain in my legs. Unbearable, at times, to say the least. He bluntly told me, “No, there’s really nothing that can be done for your pain.” Of course, I already knew that. I know my body inside and out. When doctors tell me something I don’t know, I go home and research the hell out of the subject. I know that there’s not much that can be done for neuropathic pain. Live with it, or die. Some days, the latter seems preferable.
I have an EMG (electromyography) scheduled next week. The neurosurgeon wants to see if he can pinpoint the locus of my neuropathic pain. I am not optimistic that anything will come from this, but since I have never had an EMG on my legs, I thought it would be a good idea to have the test done. Maybe a miracle diagnosis awaits, right?
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
According to the Bible, pain and suffering are tests, trials, and punishments from God. God punished Adam and Eve for eating fruit off a forbidden tree:
And to the man he [God] said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you,‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:17-19 NRSV)
While Evangelicals love to protect God’s honor, the Bible is clear: all pain and suffering comes from God himself. I have firsthand experience with pain and suffering. All of us, if we live long enough, will have similar experiences, though the reason, degree, and length will vary from person to person. Most of us have experienced acute pain:
Acute pain is a sudden, short-term pain that signals a specific injury or illness and typically goes away once the cause is treated or healed.
Chronic pain is pain that lasts for over three months. You may feel the pain all the time or it may come and go. It can happen anywhere in your body and has countless causes.
Chronic pain is pain that doesn’t do away. It may get better or worse, but this sort of pain never goes away. This is the kind of pain I have had since the late 1990s. There’s not been a day since I was forty years old that I have been pain-free. What started with fibromyalgia has grown like a brushfire with osteoarthritis, degenerative spine disease, gastroparesis, and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Today, my life is one long, exhausting struggle with pain. My goal every day has been to control my pain well enough that I have enough energy to write and do work around the house. Some days, it is impossible for me to do anything more than survive; to live to face another day. And other days, all I want to do is die. I love my family, but sometimes my pain is so severe that all I want, in the moment, is for the pain to stop.
Chronic pain sufferers know that pain medications become less effective over time. That’s the case for me. I’ve been taking narcotic drugs for twenty years. Over this time, I have unnecessarily suffered because of the government’s and Parkview Hospital’s war on chronic pain sufferers. I take fifty percent less morphine load today than I did five years ago. I have largely found that local pain doctors are worthless; more concerned with doing injections and procedures than they are managing the suffering of chronic pain sufferers. And even worse, local pain doctors, to the person, oppose cannabis use. Figure that one out.
If the goal of medicine is to lessen suffering, why don’t doctors do more to help their chronic pain patients? My primary care doctor plans to retire in four years. He told me it is unlikely, due to clinic policies, that another doctor will write my narcotic scripts. I replied, “No problem. I plan to be dead by then.” My doctor thought I was being funny, but I most certainly was not. Without narcotic pain medications — yes, many people really need them — I will not survive. “But, Bruce, aren’t you worried about becoming a drug addict?” Are you kidding? Of course not. I have CHRONIC pain. It never, ever goes away. I suspect my pain will only get worse with time. How could it be otherwise? My spine — from neck to coccyx — shoulders, and hands continue to structurally deteriorate. I can easily see a time when I can no longer type or walk. As it stands now, I use a cane, walker, or a wheelchair to get around.
If I am a chronic pain sufferer, why does it matter if I become “addicted”? If I was in hospice with terminal pancreatic cancer, would I be given narcotics for pain control? Would the goal be to ease my suffering? Of course, it would. Why, then, is it any different for chronic pain sufferers? Just because we are dying “slowly” doesn’t mean we aren’t in just as much pain as those who have terminal illnesses.
I do all I can on any given day to manage and control my pain: heating pads, steaming hot baths, Tylenol/aspirin, TENS unit, stretching exercises, massage, cannabis, and, yes, narcotic pain medications. I also take medications to manage symptoms from gastroparesis and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Cannabis has reduced my nausea and vomiting, so there’s that, for which I am grateful.
I see a neurosurgeon later this week; the same surgeon who did my surgery a year ago. Hopefully, he will provide an answer for my lower back pain and awful neuropathic leg pain. If so, I will have surgery again, though I am hesitant to do so. All I know to do to is gather information and decide accordingly.
Are you a chronic pain sufferer? Is your pain well-managed? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Over the past four months, an Evangelical woman named Terri has sent me more than fifty emails and commented over one hundred fifty times. I asked her five times to please stop emailing me. I also let her know that many of her comments were unhelpful, and, at times offensive. Did this stop her from emailing me? No.
Terri is friendly and polite, but she lacks all sense of personal boundaries and respect. If someone politely asks you not to do something, yet you repeatedly do it anyway, that reveals a lack of respect. Terri will deny being disrespectful or not honoring boundaries, but most readers will likely conclude that sending me fifty emails and leaving one hundred fifty comments — many of which were sent after I asked her to stop — is excessive. Include the comments I didn’t approve, and the total nears two-hundred.
I don’t understand this kind of behavior, mainly because I have never emailed- or comment-bombed someone. What’s the point? I suspect Terri thinks she is duty bound to “share” the truth — her personal interpretations of the Bible — with me, even if I know a hell of a lot more about that Bible, theology, and church history than she does. She likely believes God wants her to share the gospel and the love of God with everyone, even those who have told her they are not interested in what she is peddling. I wish Terri and other Evangelicals would stop behaving like this, but I fear it’s pathological. “Bruce is headed for Hell, and needs Jesus,” zealots think, and God dammit, they are going to irritate the hell out of me regardless of whether I ask them to stop. In their minds, my personal discomfort is the price I must pay for the “good news.” Little do they know or care that their behavior is actually driving me away from Christianity, and I suspect that thousands of the people who read this blog will say the same.
Several days ago, Terri sent me the following email:
Bruce! Just wanted to encourage you here…
Want to encourage me? Send me bags of cash or mind your own business. I told Terri several times that I was not interested in what she had to say about my health. She has no relevant expertise other than the ability to do a web search, so there is no reason I should pay attention to her anecdotal stories and personal opinions. It is evident Terri either doesn’t understand how sick I am or doesn’t care. Or she could be one of those Christians who thinks it is their calling in life to “fix” people. I regularly see a primary care doctor, neurologist, endocrinologist, dermatologist, gastroenterologist, and a podiatrist. I have had a full-day work-up for multiple sclerosis (MS) at Toledo Hospital and a comprehensive examination for fibromyalgia at the University of Michigan. These and other medical professionals treat me for gastroparesis (lack of proper bowel function), endocrine pancreatic insufficiency (pancreas doesn’t produce digestive enzymes), peripheral neuropathy (nerve pain), fibromyalgia (which causes widespread muscle pain and fatigue), degenerative spine disease (think, my spine is literally falling apart), Morton’s neuroma (nerve inflammation in both feet), high blood pressure (well managed), diabetes (well managed), increasing memory loss (early-stage dementia? God, I hope not.), tinnitus, vision problems (my vision flipped from nearsightedness to farsightedness), bladder and bowel incontinence, and four bouts of basal/squamous cell skin cancer.
Most of these diseases are incurable. All that my doctors can do is encourage me and treat my symptoms. My primary care doctor — who has been treating me for almost thirty years — admits that I am his enigma — perplexing, challenging, difficult to treat.
I live with constant pain, from my head to the bottom of my feet. I require a cane to get around home, and a wheelchair or walker when I (rarely) have the opportunity to go to town. I have lost more than one hundred pounds, and I am plagued with frequent bouts of nausea and vomiting. And then comes nighttime; you know when most people go to sleep. I too lie down to sleep, but it takes me HOURS to fall asleep — with narcotic pain medication and cannabis — thanks to horrible pain from my neck and spine to my legs. Sure, if I took a lot more Hydrocodone and cannabis, my pain would be less, but I would sleep all the time, and this blog you are reading would be no more. I must choose between the two.
Typically, I get up in early afternoon. After getting up, I use the bathroom, dress, and wait for Polly to come home from work at 3:20 pm. We talk a bit, eat dinner, and then I watch a sports news program. Afterward, if I have any steam left, I start to write. I usually have three to five hours to maintain this blog and publish content. Some days (increasingly so) I don’t have the physical wherewithal and mental acuity to meaningfully write. On these days, I spend the night reading, watching TV, and listening to podcasts. If I am able, I try to do household chores or take care of smaller projects around the house. Three years ago, I reignited my love for post-war Lionel O-gauge electric trains. I threw myself into the project, hoping to build a train layout in an upstairs room for my grandchildren and I to enjoy. Sadly, it’s been almost two years since I navigated the stairs to work on the 12′ by 12′ layout.
Knowing these things, do you really think I want to receive medical advice from you, especially when you have no relevant expertise nor do you know me will enough to invade my personal space to give me advice? Readers such as Carolyn, my editor, Zoe, ObstacleChick, Geoff, Ben, or Troy, to name a few, have been my friends for a long time. They have invested a lot of time in reading my writing and supporting my work. None of them offers me unsolicited medical advice. At best, they might send me a link to an article, asking me if I had seen it, but that’s it. They know what I need is love, respect, and understanding, and not uneducated, unprofessional medical advice.
a beautiful thing happened in our city a few months ago…a man who lived alone, and who was an atheist, became very sick. He was all alone, no family to take care of him, and so he decided to pray for 3 days straight. At the end of it, he found himself healed!! He’s doing great now!!
This story sounds like a sermon illustration; a fictional story meant to prove a point. If this really happened, I would love to interview the man. I want to know what sickened him. Did he take medication or see doctors? Who was the doctor, so I can interview him too. I want to know if he thinks this man was miraculously healed.
Further, how does Terri KNOW it was her God who healed this man? Satan, a divine healer too, could have healed the man. How does she know that the man was healed as the direct result of three days of non-stop prayer? All we have is a story told by an Evangelical Christian who has spun other fantastical stories before this one. I didn’t believe those stories, and I don’t believe this one either. My unbelief can be easily remedied by providing sufficient empirical evidence to justify the healing claim. I am ready to start a betting pool on whether this evidence will be forthcoming. My money is on “no!”
Terri refuses to accept that most of my physical maladies are incurable. All doctors know to do is treat my symptoms. I have had major surgery twice, five outpatient surgeries, and endured several experimental procedures. There’s not anything else that can be done for me (though I may need surgery on my spine again). So I understand the compulsion some Christians have to offer unsolicited medical advice or prayers. That said, I have made my desires clear, so this unwanted email tells me that what I want or need doesn’t matter to Terri.
God is no respecter of persons…if He did it for him, He will do it for others, too. That’s hope!!
Which God? If the woman who sent me the email worships the Christian deity, I ask again, which Christian God since there are so many? Terri knows I am an atheist, so God talk has no effect on me other than to irritate and annoy me. That’s why Evangelicals are typically given one opportunity to comment. I approve ALL first-time comments, but I encourage Evangelicals to say all they need to say in their first comment. Preach away, but you will likely only have one opportunity to put in a good word for Jesus. I gave Terri a lot of space to spread her viewpoint, but eventually I had enough. I asked her to write one final comment, which I would turn into a post. No edits, no moderation. Say what you want, but that’s it. What did Terri do? She sent me a link to a video she wanted me to post. I, of course, refused.
I love it when Evangelicals say that “God is no respecter of persons,” when the Bible reveals a deity that is very much so, starting with God initially choosing the Jews as his covenant people over the Gentiles. The doctrines of election and predestination also show that God is certainly a respecter of persons.The Bible is littered with examples of the triune God playing favorites.
Further, I am an atheist, so claims of God’s existence fall on deaf ears. Personal testimonies and subjective experiences have no power to explain the existence of the Evangelical deity. These are faith claims, a faith I do not, nor will ever, have.
Does the Bible reflect a God who heals people with respect to who and what they are? Of course not. If God is no respecter of persons and prayer can affect healing, why do MOST Christians go through life unhealed? Churches are filled with praying sick people.
Having said all of that, I will make a wager with Terri’s God. “Jesus, you supposedly healed a sick atheist, so I know you can heal me. If you heal me, I will immediately profess faith in you and spend the remaining days of my life worshipping and serving you. I will shutter this blog, and do all I can to preach the gospel.” The ball is in Jesus’ court. “Heal me, Jesus, and I am yours. If not, I will continue on in my atheist ways, confident that you are a myth, a figment in the imagination of countless Christians.” Think Jesus will heal me? Imagine what a trophy I would be if Jesus healed me, leading to me confessing faith in him. I won’t hold my breath, stop taking medications, or cancel my doctor’s appointments. Stupid I am not. If I have learned anything in my sixty-eight years of life, it is this: Jesus is not the Great Physician and prayer is worthless outside of giving the appearance you are doing something meaningful for people, when you actually are not.
I hope Terri “hears” me. Same goes for others who think my health problems are opportunities for them to put in a word for Jesus. I am NOT interested, and the more you ignore my wishes, the farther you drive me away from Christianity. As of the writing of this post, I can’t think of one reason why I would ever want to become a Christian again. I know I will receive several emails/comments threatening me with judgment and Hell. Whatever — such threats have no effect on me — and I mean none.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I have been told countless times over the past twenty years, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Is this a true statement? Not from my perspective. Two-plus decades of chronic pain and suffering have not made me stronger. Over the years, I have been diagnosed with and treated for (in order of severity): degenerative spine disease, peripheral nerve pain, gastroparesis, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, osteoarthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure. I have also been treated for basal cell and squamous cell skin cancer three times, with another treatment forthcoming due to a cancerous growth on my left forearm.
My first battles with health problems date back to the 1980s. Primarily immune system problems, I ended up in the hospital with mononucleosis in 1991. What is called a “kissing disease” for teenagers, for adults, mono is a serious disease that can kill you. I was so sick that I had a 104-degree temperature, my liver and spleen were swollen, as were my lymph glands, and my adenoids and tonsils were pure white from infection. The internist treating me said that there was little he could do for me; that it was up to my body to fend for itself. I eventually recovered. All told, I lost over fifty pounds and was unable to preach for two months. One oddity to come out this is that my normal body temperature is now 97.0 degrees. (Good luck trying to explain to a nurse that 99 degrees is the equivalent of 100.6 degrees — you know, a fever.)
Suffering is part of the human experience. All of us will suffer at one time or another in our lives, and our suffering is unique to each of us. Can suffering make us stronger? Sure, it can, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily does. I know that for me, I don’t see anything redemptive in my suffering. I don’t have pain-free days — ever. I have bad days, less bad days, and days when I want to kill myself. My mobility is greatly diminished, and I am prone to nasty falls. Life is what it is, and I accept that this is life until I die. No magic surgeries or miracle drugs await me. What DOES await is life, and I do what I can to make the most of it.
Has chronic pain and suffering made me a better man? Maybe. I am more empathetic towards the suffering of others. As a fellow sufferer, I understand what they are going through. However, I am more inclined to think that pain and suffering have turned me into a broken man; a man who silently pleads for a day, just one day, without pain. I have found that the only pain-free times in life were when the anesthesiologist told me to count back from ten as I fell asleep.
Please don’t tell a chronic pain sufferer that their suffering is making them stronger. You can’t know this, so instead of pretending you are a mindreader, how about (gently) embracing their suffering with love, kindness, and compassion?
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As many of you know, I had major surgery on my spine in August. By all accounts, the surgery was a success. Three months later, I am still recovering from the surgery. That said, I am being hammered on every side by chronic pain, gastroparesis, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), fibromyalgia, and degenerative spine disease — all of which are incurable. These diseases are my cross to bear. My cross is increasingly heavy, leaving me, some days, in despair. I am also having a blood pressure problem. I am on three blood pressure medications, yet it wildly fluctuates. My primary care doctor made several adjustments to my medications, hoping this will lead to better numbers.
Thanks to a major gastroparesis flare-up and EPI, I am constantly nauseous, and since October 1, I have lost twenty-five pounds. I am on protein supplement shakes so I get enough calories in my diet.
For these reasons, my ability to write is limited, as I am sure you have noticed. My writing production has dropped precipitously. There’s little I can do other than hope for a better day. I saw a new pain doctor who put me on a buprenorphine patch, which is slowly being titrated. The doctor required that I stop using cannabis, which had helped with my pain and nausea. The doctors giveth, the doctors taketh away.
I am woefully behind on answering emails and sending thank-you notes to donors. I apologize for my tardiness, but there’s nothing I can do to change things. I hope things get better soon, and if and when they do, I will do my best to catch up on my correspondence. In time, I hope I can return to a fuller writing schedule. For now, what you see is what you get.
By the way, Polly will have her right knee replaced on December 30. She will be off work for eight weeks.
I appreciate your understanding as I navigate this new normal in my life.
Your kindness, love, and support are greatly appreciated.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Life is like a spinning plate. In normal circumstances, the plate as it spins is balanced and in control. Occasionally, the plate will become overloaded or unbalanced, but with time will balance itself out, and life will continue along with little to no spillage from the plate.
For people battling chronic illness and pain, their spinning plate is dissimilar to that of many people. Thanks to struggles with pervasive illnesses and unrelenting pain, their plates are already full, spinning wobbly, sending the contents of the plate every which way, and, sometimes, propelling the plate into the wall or floor. Daily, small things are added to the plate, causing further imbalance. The plate owner struggles to keep the plate spinning without crashing. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn’t. And when he fails, he makes a mess for all to see, often leading to despair.
For me personally, it is the small things in life that often fuel my depression. I can handle big things, and big decisions. It is the small things that pile up on my plate, leading me to deep, dark — at times suicidal — times in my life; moments when I just want to die. Those are times when narcotic pain medications don’t work effectively or eating food of any type makes me sick or leads to vomiting. Last night, I spent the night into the morning hours in the bathroom — sixteen visits in all. Loose bowels and lack of sphincter muscle control . . . shitty bed, shitty clothes, shitty floors, shitty, shitty, shit everywhere. An accumulation of small things that left me in despair, not wanting to live another day. Fortunately, after dropping eight pounds in less than a day, things have returned to normal — whatever the hell “normal” means.
Every day, the small things change, but their effect on my life is the same, threatening to spin my life’s plate out of control. My therapist and I often talk about small things and how they affect my life. The goal, of course, is to lessen the number of small things in my life; to lessen the small things piling up on my plate. That’s easier said than done. When your bowels say shit, you shit. When your stomach says vomit, you vomit. When your legs and spine leave you writhing in pain, you writhe in pain. Contrary to what the positive mental attitude (PMA) prophets might say, some things are beyond our control. There’s little I can do to change how my body responds to food or nerve and joint pain. I can take medications or use mental techniques to redirect my pain, but there are times when nothing I do works. All I know to do is grit my teeth and hold on, hoping that my suffering will lessen. There’s no healing or deliverance on the horizon. All I can do is endure . . . until I no longer can do so.
I wish I had the luxury of sitting back and enjoying life, but when you have chronic health problems, you have no time to waste on the “good life.” I am at the place in life where I have tied a knot at the end of the rope, and I am hanging on for dear life. I love Polly; I love my children and their spouses; I love my grandchildren; I love my siblings. I live for them. I still have writing I want to do; and a book to finish. I still want to get my house in order, so that when the day comes that my plate comes crashing to the floor one last time, Polly won’t be left with a mess. As it stands now, if I died today, my demise would leave the love of my life in a difficult spot. She deserves better, and so do my children and grandchildren.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Last week, I shared with readers my interaction with a former church member named Terry. Terry was a teenager and young adult in two churches I pastored in the 1980s and 1990s. You can read my responses to Terry here and here.
Terry decided to stop messaging me, leaving me with one final comment. After striking a conciliatory tone, Terry took issue with my use of swear words — three out of 3,000 words — saying, “Not sure why you have [to] drop foul language in you[r] blogs sounds ignorant and childish.” Sigh, right? (Please read Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”) It is almost always Fundamentalist Christians who get upset over my use of non-approved words. I addressed this subject in a post titled Evangelical Swear Words. I don’t use many swear words in my writing. If my sparse use of them offends you, then, by all means, stop frequenting this site. I wouldn’t want to cause any further anal clenching for you. 🙂
Terry also had one more judgment to hurl my way:
Have you considered your health might be a judgment from God.
Terry knows I have serious health problems. I explained all of these issues in my second response to him. Yet, he decided to say that the “real” reason for my suffering is that God is judging me. Terry is not the first Evangelical to make such a claim. How could Terry possibly know that my health problems are his peculiar God’s judgment on my life for walking away from Christianity? Only God could know this for sure, right? Yet, Terry and other Evangelicals, seem to think they can divine God’s will, purpose, and plan for what I have experienced in life.
While my gastroparesis and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) diagnoses were determined in the past three years, everything else I am dealing with: fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes, neuropathy, and degenerative spine disease, all first showed their faces while I was still an Evangelical pastor. My debilitating pain predates my atheism. I was an on-fire, sold-out follower of Jesus when I saw a doctor who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. I was twenty-one years old the first time I had a problem with my spine. Polly, my partner of forty-six years, has many “fond” memories of the years I spent battling pneumonia and never-ending problems with bronchitis. She fondly remembers me spending a night in the ICU for a suspected heart attack, only to, thankfully, hear I had pleurisy. She remembers me almost dying from mononucleosis in the early 1990s; hearing the internist at the hospital tell her that if my immune system didn’t pick up there was nothing he could do for me. She almost was a widow at a young age.
Evangelicals who say my health problems are God’s judgment seem to be clueless as to how their words are “heard”; either that, or they don’t care. Do they really believe that telling me that their peculiar God is inflicting me with pain and suffering for no other reason than I lack sufficient evidence to believe in or worship him will lead me back to Jesus?
I have a three-year-old redheaded grandson named Silas. He’s a handful. Silas has no fear of anything. He must be watched at all times. Our living room is small, 16’x20′. We have three lamps in the room, along with an overhead light. I HATE the overhead light. My grandkids know not to turn the light on when I am in the room. Not Silas. He will run over to the wall switch, give me a look — you know, THAT look — turn on the light, and run off. No matter what I say or do, Silas keeps flipping the switch. Mischief is his middle name, some sort of karmic payback for my own childhood mischief. If my mom were alive, she would be smiling.
Imagine if I determined to teach Silas a lesson about the overhead light. I decided that the next time Silas turned the light on I would break his arm. Boy, that would get his attention, right? This is EXACTLY what Evangelicals are saying when they say that God has afflicted me to get my attention or to teach me a lesson. What, exactly, did I ever do to God to deserve such punishment? Or is God okay with Bruce, the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist, and it is Evangelicals who want to see me suffer? Sadly, many Evangelicals are sadists. Unbelievers have what they can’t have, so they rail against them, uttering threats of suffering, death, and Hell.
If I broke Silas’ arm because he kept turning on the light, I would deserve to be arrested and locked up for my crime. So it is for the Evangelical deity who inflicts suffering on finite beings. If such a deity exists, he is unworthy of our worship.
As far as my pain and suffering coming from God is concerned, I wrote:
Let me circle back around to this idea that God gave me fibromyalgia, gastroparesis, and degenerative spine disease because he is trying to get my attention; that every night I writhe in pain in bed, unable to sleep, my suffering is a message of love from the Christian deity.
What’s with God “trying” to do anything? Is he weak and powerless, unable to do what he wants? If God is not willing that any should perish, how is possible that Bruce Gerencser, a frail, broken-down biped, can thwart God’s will? Surely God can easily and effortlessly reach me at any time. “Nothing is too hard for God” and “with God all things are possible,” the Bible says. Yet, it seems that saving me is too hard for God and that it is impossible for the Big Kahuna to reach me.
If my suffering is God trying to get my attention, does this mean that if I repent and put my faith and trust in Jesus, my chronic pain and illnesses will immediately and magically disappear? Crickets are all I hear from Evangelicals. They know there is no connection between my health problems and God. None. Shit happens, and this is my shit to deal with.
As I told one Evangelical zealot several weeks ago after she said she was praying God would totally heal me, if God heals me I will immediately repent and become a Christian. I will shutter this blog and immediately return to church. I might even become a pastor again. What a miraculous story I would have to tell. The Defiant Atheist Bruce Gerencser Brought to Repentance and Faith By God Delivering Him From Pain and Suffering!! What a story, right?
And a “story” it shall remain. As much as I would like to go to bed tonight without pain and debility, I know that God is not going to heal me. This is my lot in life, and no amount of praying will change this fact. God isn’t judging me. I am paying the price of admission to the human race. I accept that this is just how things are.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Years ago, I had no email or comment guidelines for this site. This led to a wild, wild west feeling, of sorts, with Evangelical zealots daily sending me hateful, nasty emails and leaving comments with similar content. Over time, I established comment guidelines and asked readers NOT to contact me if they intended to preach, evangelize, or deconstruct my life.
If you would like to contact Bruce Gerencser, please use the following form. If your email warrants a response, someone will respond to you as soon as possible.
Due to persistent health problems, I cannot guarantee a timely response. Sometimes, I am a month or more behind on responding to emails. This delay doesn’t mean I don’t care. It does mean, however, that I can only do what I can do. I hope you understand.
To help remedy this delay in response, my editor, Carolyn, may respond to your email. Carolyn has been my editor for six years. She knows my writing inside and out, so you can rest assured that if your question concerns something I have written, Carolyn’s response will reflect my beliefs and opinions — albeit with fewer swear words.
I do not, under any circumstances, accept unsolicited guest posts. Think that I’m interested in letting you write a post with a link back to your site, I’m not.
I am not interested in receiving commercial email from you.
I am not interested in buying social media likes, speeding up my website, signing up for your Ad service, improving my SEO, or having you design a new blog theme for this site.
I will not send you money for your ministry, church, or orphanage. In fact, just don’t ask for money, period.
I know you stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, but you are not a medical professional, so please do not send me unsolicited medical or psychological advice. I am not interested — ever.
If you are an Evangelical Christian, please read Dear Evangelical before sending me an email. If you have a pathological need to evangelize, spread the love of Jesus, or put a good word in for the man, the myth, the legend named Jesus, please don’t. The same goes for telling me your church/pastor/Jesus is awesome. I am also not interested in reading sermonettes, testimonials, Bible verses, or your deconstruction/psychological evaluation of my life. By all means, if you feel the need to set me straight, start your own blog.
If you email me anyway — and I know you will, since scores of Evangelicals have done just that, showing me no regard or respect — I reserve the right to make your message and name public. This blog is read by thousands of people every day, so keep that in mind when you email me whatever it is you think “God/Jesus/Holy Spirit” has laid upon your heart. Do you really want your ignorance put on display for thousands of people to see? Pause before hitting send. Ask yourself, “how will my email reflect on Jesus, Christianity, and my church?”
Outside of the exceptions mentioned above, I promise to treat all correspondence with you as confidential. I have spent the last fourteen years corresponding with people who have been psychologically harmed by Evangelical Christianity. I am more than happy to come alongside you and provide what help I can. I am not, however, a licensed counselor. I am just one man with fifty years of experience as a Christian and twenty-five years of experience as an Evangelical pastor. I am more than happy to lend you what help and support I can.
Thank you for taking the time to contact me.
Adding this text to the Contact page greatly reduced the volume of my mail, though some readers ignore my requests and email me anyway. In their minds, all that matters is them putting in a word for Jesus or putting the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser in his place. Generally, I use such emails for blog fodder or ignore them altogether.
I also receive emails from people who are determined to give me unsolicited medical advice — even though I ask them NOT to do so. Let me share with you a brief email exchange that took place recently:
Shari:Have you ever looked into the carnivore or lion diet for help with all of your health issues? I have heard many amazing recovery stories from this kind of elimination diet. MeatRX.com Just thought I’d pass it on in case you are at your wits in with the medical establishment and taking more and more prescriptions. Don’t know why, maybe God lead me to your site.
Bruce:My contact page says: “I know you stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, but you are not a medical professional, so please do not send me unsolicited medical or psychological advice. I am not interested — ever.”
Shari: My sincerest apologies. My heart just went out to you for all your medical issues and I thought, you are too young to be dealing with all you are dealing with medically and you have grandchildren to love! I did not read the whole contact page. I read some of your other pages and was on your bio. I didn’t read that you had lost 100 lbs until after I emailed you. I just saw you had some medical issues.
Do not worry, you will never EVER hear from me again sir! What a shock to read this reply to a genuine concern for your quality of life and a desire to help. I am truly sorry for whatever you have experienced to cause you to be so ungracious. “Thanks for your concern but no thank you” could have sufficed or just not reply at all!
You are right, I am not a medical professional but I have been misdiagnosed/damaged by them and am always looking for natural ways to improve my life! Yes, it was unsolicited advice but I thought maybe you have not seen the amazing stories I have seen.
I bet you are really a lot of fun at parties!
Bruce:It is not ungracious to expect people to respect your wishes. I have received hundreds of emails just like yours— from people who either can’t read or were never taught by their momma to respect the place and person of others. That you think it is okay to offer unsolicited medical advice to complete strangers is astounding.
I have serious health problems; incurable problems; problems that will likely kill me. Twenty-seven years ago, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia — a disease that causes widespread pain and debility. Three years I was diagnosed with gastroparesis, and last year I was told I have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) — both of which affect my ability to eat, digest food, and absorb nutrients. I take a medicine that costs $3,000 a month to provide enzymes that help with food digestion and absorption. Since 2021, I have lost 100 pounds. Yes, I am still obese, but I have lost 25 percent of my body mass.
Thirty months ago, after extensive testing, including CT scans and MRIs, I was diagnosed with degenerative spine disease (Please see Health Update: I’m F**ked):
Disc herniation (T7,T8)
Disc herniation (T6,T7)
Central spinal canal stenosis (T9/T10, T10/T11)
Foraminal stenosis (T5,T6)
Disc degeneration/spondylosis (T1/T2 through T10/T11)
Facet Arthropathy throughout the spine, particularly at T2/T3, T3/T4, T5/T6, and T7/T8 through the T12/L1 levels.
Hypertrophic arthropathy at T9/T10
Look at a picture of the human spine, and using the joint numbers above, you will see that I have widespread damage to my spine and neck. A recent visit with a neurosurgeon left me with a diagnosis that said my spine damage could not be fixed surgically. I also have osteoarthritis throughout the joints of my body.
None of the aforementioned diseases is curable. My primary care doctor considers me to be one of his most challenging patients. There is little he can do for me except to lessen my pain and suffering. I know he’s frustrated and disappointed that he cannot do more for me.
No change of diet will “fix” any of these serious health problems. Shari suggested that I follow the carnivore (only meat, eggs, dairy) or lion (only beef) diet, which are nothing more than extreme versions of the Atkins diet. Of course, with my digestive problems, a meat-laden diet would kill me. According to Shari, if I follow her unsolicited medical advice, it will help ALL my health problems. What’s next, Reiki, homeopathy, or candida elimination? Changing my diet will not do one damn thing for the aforementioned health problems.
I also have high blood pressure and diabetes — both of which are controlled with medication. What I find odd (and offensive) is that people assume that there is something wrong with my diet to start with. How could they possibly know this? Outside of Polly, no one but me knows what I eat. These “health experts” assume that because I am sick or overweight, there must be something amiss with my diet. I hate to break it to you, Sister Geraldine, but I eat a balanced diet with lots of vegetables. Like all of us, I can eat more than I should, but generally, there is nothing wrong with my diet.
I am almost sixty-seven years old. I have never, ever, not one time, offered someone unsolicited medical advice. If asked, I will certainly offer what knowledge I have, but I do not seek out strangers on the Internet and offer them my ill-informed, ignorant diagnosis of their health problems. Such behavior is rude and disrespectful. But, Bruce, they mean well! Maybe, but I don’t care if they do. If I have a sign on my front door that says NO SOLICITATION, I expect people to respect my wishes. And if they don’t? They have no right to get butthurt as Shari did when I pointed out her boorish behavior. If I want medical advice from you, I will ask for it. Until then, mind your own fucking business. (This, by the way, is me being polite. If you knew how much emails from the Sharis of the world piss me off, you might compliment me on my reserve. 🙂 )
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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