Pain. Pain is a harsh mistress. She is insanely jealous; any attempt to think of another causes her to clasp me in an embace that cannot be denied. Like any abusive spouse, she separates me from my other loves; she causes me to adopt her habits of bad temper; when rivals speak to me, she whispers into my ear so that I cannot follow their conversations; she causes me to talk of nothing but her. Of all rivals for her attention, only the gentle daughters of the Goddess Lethe, Oxycontin and Hydrocodone, can get a word in edgewise- but she waits impatiently, balefully, to grasp me all the stonger when they weaken.
The seers, the Oracles of Aescapulus, assure me that in a couple weeks she will loose interest and embrace another... and she laughs. "What is time," she whispers, "A few weeks with the right person is eternity."
Sorry, my loves, I must go; my mistress is calling.
3 comments:
Ok, that was disquieting.
CC
Sorry, CC- I don't really mean to be such a drama queen... but this was not what I expected or was prepared to cope with. I had gone into surgery to correct a problem that was already producing what my doctor described to my wife as "life-altering pain", plus another procedure to correct a problem that was not painful, but a "quality of life" issue... and I came out having undergone major surgery. Don't get me wrong- I extremely grateful that while they had me open they discovered and removed the tumor... but for months I had been holding on by knowing that I would be finally out of pain by now. But I'm not, and recovery will be longer than expected, and I'm running out of coping mechanisms. Maybe it's the Ativan they're using to enhance the effects of both the painkillers and the muscle relaxants, but there are times when I can't even follow an "old friend" book- I read the same page five times and still don't get it; new books are out of the question. Websurfing and blogreading I can manage for short periods when the Oxycontin is peaking (like now, or when I wrote the original post), but my mind usually starts wndering before I can comment. Intellectually I know this will pass, but I just don't know how to cope right now.
Hey, Joel, please let us know how you're doing these days. Your last post was, as CC says, disquieting and made me hurt for you. I hope the worst of it is now behind you.
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