One must learn to do what is in his/her power, and refuse to do what is not. It's not in our power to make our bodies whole; it's not in our power to make pain something welcome, as the body rebels and resists it's own circumstances. However, it is in our power to use these very conditions to remind us of our wish to be free, to strengthen it, actually, because our body will (one day) pass from this earth, and we should be about the daily business of remembering just how temporary is our stay here... so that each moment is made meaningful.

How do we use the pain, the awkward stabs of suffering that visit us? By refusing to be used by our (natural) resistance to them. It's not that we "want" to have the extra pain, far from it; rather, what we do want is to be able (as best we are able) to take the visit of that pain and embarrassment, as the case may be, and to transform it into the awareness of that part of us over which pain, this physical body, has NO authority over at all.

There is in you, in all of us who strive for the Light, another body that is beyond the known touch of physical stress, strain, and pained limitation. Our work is to remember that possibility at the height of whatever our conflict may be in the moment, ranging from emotional upheaval to total physical breakdown. Continue with your studies. Ask God to show you how to use the pain in the moment of its appearance; in turning to the Light of yourself in these moments, as best you can, what is dark in you will be used as God intends and you will be enriched accordingly.