Pain

I’m deliberately NOT editing this because I want it to be as stream of conciousness as I can type.  This is about pain, so if you don’t want to read it, stop.  I’m also likely to swear, a lot, so be prepared.

A friend of mine who recently had a heart attack described chronic pain this way.  It hurts.  Always.  “Hi, how ya doin?” “Pretty good” (hurts). “Have a good night?” “Not too bad,” (still hurts). Take a shower?  Hurts. Laundry?  Hurts.  Watching TV. Hurts.

And that’s a good way to describe it, but doesn’t get at the heart. Get a hammer.  Now from an inch, drop it on the back of your hand. Do it again. And again. Again. Again. Again. Again. By now your hand should hurt like hell even though no real damage has been done.  Those last couple of drops you’d be saying fuck this.

You get to stop dropping the hammer.

That’s it in a nutshell. Something is going wrong for us, that fortunately isn’t going wrong for you. And so I’m on so many painkillers I lose track of them (this is what my emergency box is for, it’s got the second line drugs in there, and I made damn sure I kept it below daily OD for any of them).

What did I use to be able to do?  Do this coherently (Ithink I’m doing ok), bike, ruhn, play golf, play catch, That’s the physical side, the mental side, I could tell you what I did yesterday.  Now I don’t have a clue. I could read books and talk about them.  Now I barely remember picking them up, and when I do, I have to read the same section repeatedly so I can remember what’s going on, and I don’t.

Nearly every day I’m in so much pain at some point I’m in tears. Most days I ask myself why haven’t I killed myself. Yet. Now none of that makes sense.

Go back to the hammer.  The hammer is still dropping.  It will be half an hour from now, it was half an hour ago.

I can’t eat. The pain makes me constantly nauseous. Guys will understand this one, mostly of them anyway.  Most guys have been racked badly enough they want to puke.  I don’t get racked, but have puked, not ffelt like it, puked. It doesn’t help.

The hammer is still dropping.

For some people, there’s something actively wrong. A bone that never healed right. Arthitis for something simple, ubt where that will make you wince and drop thijngs and really hurt, it’s something you can do something with.  A pinched nerve in the spine, a slipped disc, hey here’s one!  Toothache!  That one is going and going until you get to the dentist and he does something.

For some of us, it’s not something you’ll see.  I’ve got MS, and for me, there are all kinds of things going on (see before) but the big one is murderous pain.  I’m not killed about that one, when the lillte hammer which is still dropping, get traded for THE BIG HAMMER, the 16 poudn sledge getting dropped from three feet over and over, you hand me a button and say:

If you presss that button it will stop your pai… no, you have to wait for me to finish, stop pressing the button! (ahhh… it worked) Fuck! What’d he just do?

Sir? Bakerfield California is reporting a mass casualty event.

Shit. What I was going to tell you was, press that button and the pain stops, but it kills 100 people every time you press it.  How many times did he press it?

Sir? We’re not sure, after the 42^nd press he was hitting it so hard our tracking software stopped registering. He broke the sensor.

Well do you feel bad about killing Bakersfield?”

After the fact, yeah, I’m sure I would.

The hammer is still dropping. I’m glad it’s not the big one.