In The Chronic Pain Waiting Room
It was hot today. The pool promises to melt away the pain.
Lately it is difficult to distinguish between normal aches and pains and the pains that will only increase with the onset of decrepitude. Is my arm pain related to my back? Pinched nerve? Arthritis? Worse? Is this a harbinger of what is to come?
Things are getting worse. Getting her up is harder. Her feet don’t work. She has to stay in bed. Cousin J is here to help. He loves her. He wraps his arms around her and muscles her into position when she slides down. She’s not talking any more. Back aches. It’s hard to move, let […]
There have been occasions where my vision goes negative. All the whites go black and the blacks go white; the yellows go purple and the reds go green. Sometimes the pain level is 10.
Spent the day in the Emergency Room as an advocate for a family member. Lots of pain in there, physical and emotional. One can only sympathize with those in pain. Empathy, to feel what another person feels, is impossible. Physical pain is a private, unsharable phenomenon. One can only understand it when one has it. There […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: another ‘stab’ at pain (pun intended): I like to understand. Slowly things come into focus. The first thing that came to my mind when I was told, “you have a kidney stone,” was a small rock inside my kidney. Then my doc said, “the pain stops once the stone leaves the ureter and […]
Dear Readers, I just couldn’t make my midnight deadline for today’s post. The kidney stone is still in its pain-producing area in my body and I’m a bit worn out. I promise another post later in the day. Thank you so much for following and reading. Jack
Here is my entry into the it-was-a dark-and-stormy-night, worst-opening-line competition: Pain… that’s what I was in, in spades. It started as discomfort and gradually grew. I am familiar with the pain scale, along with the icons depicting a person’s face without pain (#1) all the way to pain that a person could not stand (#10). […]
Joy is sick. Within hours, her scratchy throat bloomed to a 101.9 fever. Pain. Throbbing headache. She could not find a comfortable position. All night long. Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: I walked my pencil point lightly around the contour of two hands holding the feverish head I would paint. I began painting the pulsating-temple headache with […]