1.31.15

Of course, writing the above triggered a sharp crescent of pain just above my armpit, as it I'd been hit by a slingshot steel ball. One very neat spot. Almost clinical. And if I rearrange my arm, the pain retreats.

Until I reposition my arms and set to writing on my laptop. 

Pain free, until the next twinge, throb or searing ache.




With the exception of my left arm and shoulder and hand I am relatively pain free. 

At 59, I count that as a blessing. I am extremely lucky. I have somehow been spared the pain that fills so many people's lives. 

Normal aches and pains. Headaches. Backaches. Muscle spasms. 

Five sprained ankles. Tendinitis in the knee. Dislocated thumbs. Swollen knees. Second-degree burns. A concussion or two. The stuff one collects in space and time.




Pain is private. Hard to describe. Even harder to explain. 

How do you convince another of what you are feeling, especially in an age given to exaggeration, low tolerance, high expectations, an insistence that we can feel good all of the time? An age fraught with distractions and anodynes, pain killers and drugs and booze and faith that is reduced to new age crystals or crystal meth or evangelical promises that our sins and pains can be cleansed by revelation? Or that pain can be excoriated by acts of terror and counteracts of revenge? That we can erase pain from our existence by achievement. By an accumulation of a lifestyle. By walling ourselves away from the world.

It is, as I recall from my days among a college of behaviorists, a first person report. It cannot be observed. Thus it is unreliable. It is not quantifiable, measurable. 

Still, we have pain clinics. Copper bracelets, miracle healing waters, aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprphen, vicodin, oxycodone, muscle relaxers, emu oil, dream catchers, miracle juicers and bullet blenders that will wash away your pain and excess weight and toxins. 

And these are only for those physical ailments that drag us into private alleys of agony. 

There's no need here to explore the emotional or spiritual or emotion pain that fills so much of our lives.




Still, behaviorists will tell you that we can only observe pain as behavior. If that is so, are not many of us in agony? 






And what of empathy, literally "in" + "feeling": bringing inside ourselves the pain of others? 

1.31.15

Six months.

Six months of inconsistent pain. 

At work, feeling the fire in my elbow, then stretching across my forearm, a narrow river  of agony.  

In my bicep, another river of fire. 

The top of my shoulder, and straight up from the armpit, arcs of fire.  

In meetings, I massage my arm, my shoulder, my hand. Everything hurts. Like arthritis. 

The ache in my hand is dull but constant, somewhere under my skin, somewhere I can't reach or massage. I crack my knuckles, spread my fingers out like a starfish, bend my fingers back and forth, trying to pop out the pain. Colleagues watch me study my hand as if I am deep in thought, seeking ideas by tracing the hollows between bones. 

I wince and rub my biceps. A friend jokes. "You're not having a heart attack, are you?"

I could not be more calm, more restful. 

At home, emptying the dishwasher, I stretch to replace the tumblers on the shelf above the counter. I feel the fire and recoil, then nothing. relief. I reach up to put away a single soup bowl.  The same fire, the same relief as I drop my arm. The wages of getting older? 

I am 59. 

I've been expecting the arrival of aches and pains of experience. Or arthritis. A slow, syncretic attack on my flexibility and well-being.

But this is all local. While reading, I massage the crevice of skin in the front of my left shoulder.  The pain seems to slip and slide under or between bones.

Working on my laptop, I'm deep into documents when my forearm pulses. My bicep throbs. 

Getting old is not for everyone.

At night, I sleep on my left side, burying arm into the mattress, and find relief. An absence of feeling. If I turn to sleep on my back, I awake in agony and gingerly roll back onto my side. If I roll over onto my right side, I waken suddenly, teetering to find an angle of comfort.  It's as if my arm is floating on an electric fence. I retreat to my left side and fall back to sleep.

I buy ace bandages and try to compress the pain away.

I get some relief. 

I sneak ice packs and bags of frozen vegetables under the bandages to soothe the fire and get some my relief. Soon my bandages smell like old lima beans.

But none of this is constant.

Some angles and positions trigger pain. 

Most do not.  

Some days I do not feel pain.

Riding my bike, after a half hour, I reposition my arm and keep pedaling. I'm just getting old.

At a stop I try to lift my arm straight out at my side. My bicep tightens in agony.  Could it be the strain of leaning on the handlebars? It takes time. I cannot raise it above my head. But this has been the case, I realize, for several years now. The price of riding over so many asphalt patches and potholes.

After the grocery store, I grab all of the plastic handled bags in two hands to cut down on the trips from the car trunk to the kitchen. No problem.  



Years ago, when I used to run, I recall waking in the darkness, confused. The patch of skin below my left knee pulsed in pain. An electric swelling.  A buzz, as if a handful of bumble bees were wriggling below my flesh, buzzing, vibrating, stinging me.  That was later diagnosed as tendinitis. I spent months in physical therapy, tens treatment and ultrasound, ice and rest.  When I returned to run, the night buzz returned. 

I gave up running and started biking.