Friday, November 30, 2012

Hanging out with my Sasquatch

Can't think of a word to encompass how overwhelming my pain is today.  Basically, I need to be floating, touching nothing with even the tiniest inch of skin, and - since my levitation skills are nil - that's not going so great.  I'm loaded up with drugs, in the hope that I'll just drift off for a little while, laughing at the idea that chronic pain patients use meds to get high... I'm using mine to keep me from skinning myself or following through on jumping out the window, just to feel something other than how bad this hurts.  My skin is the wrong size, I can literally feel my blood pumping, as if it's bruising me just by rushing through my veins.  I hate that there isn't a word big enough to cover how much it hurts; to compare it to 'hurting' at all seems like telling you a flood is the same thing as a teardrop - hurting is the only thing I'm doing at this point: it's who I am.  Existing, just breathing my way through it.  And all because of the stupid steroids, which, thanks for saving my life and all, but maybe next time you could do it in a way that makes me want to survive?  How is it that a drug that helps people with some kinds of pain somehow cause my nerve endings to act as if they need to interpret every input at DANGER: EXPLOSION levels.  I hate how quickly I can go from 'a little bit sick' to 'every part of your body is consumed by pain and fire', and how there's not a damn thing to do about it except to wait for it to pass.  Gonna get back to that, the waiting.  Here's some other people, making me feel more human, since they're pissed off at their pain, too.

"I have no patience these days with the Nietzschean cliché, ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’ I’ve found that the deepest pain holds no meaning. It is not purifying. It is not ennobling. It does not make you a better human being. It just is. All the worst pain does is reduce us to our most primal animal. We want it to stop. We want to survive. It short-circuits any sense of self, diminishes us to a bundle of biological reflexes." Dana Jennings, Pain Beyond Words

“Pain is the Sasquatch of science, never witnessed, only endlessly speculated on.” Marni Jackson, Pain: the 5th vital sign.
 

"When I get caught up in the web of feeling, tied up til I’m completely ensnared in those slender threads of pain—–that’s when I realize that I’m out of any human reach——-out of the reach of rescue, but not out of harms way. You can’t kiss stuff like this and make it better—–sure, you could kiss it but what difference would that make?  Kiss it and make it the same.  Come get me and make me okay. I’ll wait here while we figure out why I’m fated to take it on any and all of my chins, What am I missing that makes me unlike what they call solid citizens?  What caused me to be a liquid citizen like myself, with the talent to find the winning part of losing, the talent to take that searing feeling of failure and writing it out til it doesn’t win…….?"   Carrie Fisher

1 comment:

hkd said...

we have no good drugs for nerve pain...when i watched my mom suffer with severe shingles i have never felt more helpless in my life...wouldn't it be nice if a kiss made it all better...best to you and hoping it ends soon.