There are some situations in life that I find to be painfully uncomfortable and a couple of weeks ago, a literal pain in the ass landed me into one…
So… as it happens, I have this injury to my sacro-illiac joint… it’s been niggling away for quite some time and to the point where my self-care routines have become ineffective and forced me into seeing my G.P.
Now… I’m not a frequent flyer to the Doctor’s… I have to be at my wits end before I go there… so yeah… I’ve spent around two years dismissing the option as being pointless as… well… it’s just backache! Do I really have time in my diary to go hear – It’s backache! You’re old and fat! What do you expect? Get over it!
But… I bit the bullet and made an appointment and ooooooooh…. he didn’t say any of that… what he did do is refer me to a physiotherapist…
So I hobble to physio and arrive 10 minutes early for my session, to be seen 15 minutes late and then have half of that time taken up by a lecture on the importance of time keeping and turning up for appointments… mmm… which for some strange reason leaves me in a pretty shitty disposition… which gets shittier as I’m informed in due course that I am indeed… old and fat! and I ponder that maybe the Dr didn’t so much as refer me but more delegate his nagging…
I’m getting increasingly irritated as I’m asked if I have a smart phone, so that I can scan the bar codes on my food so that I can keep track of cutting down on calories but manage it so that I can still have steak and a glass of wine…
I tilt my head to one side and stare in quizzical fashion and this woman babbles on about how she manages her lifestyle routine… my brain floods with words which I managed to dam behind a short plain statement of – Yeah… that’s not going to fit in with my lifestyle…
She’s off again… I will cancel all your sessions if you do not comply with your homework… blah blah blah.. you this, you that… you the other… You WILL do as I say…
I let her run full steam until she stops and fixes me with her stare…
I stare back…I tell her… Your diet is not suitable for my lifestyle, so think again and come up with something that will work and I will do it…
I hold back on informing her that steak and wine motivators don’t really impress me much… what with being a tee total vegetarian and all that… I’ll leave that little surprise for if she ever bothers to ask what I eat…
Instead, she moves on to – On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worse pain you can imagine, what number would you rate your pain at its worst?
7 or 8…
She looks at me in disbelief… 7 or 8… really… 7 or 8… hmppf…. based on what? Have you ever experienced pain?
I really can’t be arsed to give her blow by blow accounts of 4 births… or the abscess induced toothache that had me seriously considering removing my own tooth with a claw hammer… (which incidentally I nearly made my Dentist pass out when I described that pain as being slightly tender… he defined it for me as a 7…)
Instead I say… 8 is where nausea takes over my whole body, my vision swims and I have to sit down because it feels like I’m going to blackout… 7… well that’s when you involuntarily clench your fist to reflex punch in the face anyone who comes within about 3 feet of you in case they nudge you and make you hit 8…
How would you describe your pain?
I stare at her again… as … didn’t I just do that…
Well?!
So I reply in my native tongue of analogy, which hits her ears in a way that forces her to visibly display her pain… her jaw clenches… that pleases me… so I carry on… wondering if I can make her temples pump… well… it’s kind of like… ok… imagine this…
ONE WORD!!! she blasts at me! Describe your pain in ONE WORD!!!
I tell her that I can’t do that…
She fires words at me… one after another…
!
!
!
!
WELL?
I toss one back in desperation…
Dull…?
She accepts that and logs it into her tickbox list…
Oh… she’s taken dull as my pain category rather than my losing the will to live despair of my current experience…
By this point, I have no idea whatsoever she is rattling on about as I’ve escaped into the slipstream of my own mind…
What a stupid question… how would I describe my pain? That’s not what you wanted to know… you wanted me to give an answer that was closest fit to your pre-approved words… why didn’t you give me the list first rather than launch me into a subjective free for all to be told I’m not giving you the right answer…
I start to inwardly laugh… I feel like I’m trapped in a badly written sitcom… I think of the old light bulb jokes…
How many Freudians does it take to change a light bulb?
I imagine a room full of characters streaming through her office…
So… tell me… how would you describe your pain?
It’s an existential angst that comes creeping like cold ice and wakes me in those darkest hours just before the dawn…
Einstein swings by… it’s all relative my dear… he brings a few mathematicians with him… they find it had to calculate…
I panic that she’s going to ask me again next time I come… oh my god… do I need to register my wordiness as a disability… should I claim I have special needs and try and get an interpreter…
Or maybe I’ll let my inner Artist answer… and I can just hold up instantly a thousand words of encaustic wit…
Ah… my pain… it is exquisite!
Is it bad enough to sit through all of this again…
Just out about…
Oh… and if you happen to be wondering about the answer to How many Freudians…Well… I guess that I’d best put you out of your pain…
TWO!
One to hold the light bulb… and one to hold the cock… FATHER!!! LADDER!!!
😉
The pure and blessed way 