Pain Management ... II

First off, that's an oxymoron.

Further, it's an increasing spiral, a feedback loop. You need to manage pain well enough to be able to tolerate the stretches you need to do to lessen the pain so you can tolerate the...

You get the picture.

Dang!

I write about this stuff so much that you'd think it was fascinating or something, wouldn't you? It's more the opposite however. It doesn't fascinate. It overwhelms. Just when you should be able to concentrate on getting past it, overcoming it, the sledgehammer knocks you off kilter and all you're left with is wondering if you can still breathe. And why.

Some of it has got to be the furniture. The chairs in PT are just the right size and sturdiness that you can reach behind for the properly supported push off, taking the effort on the arms and the intact knee rather than those recently sliced apart knees. If you can manage so the pull is the right kind in the right place, the pain backs off. Then all the world seems possible.

At home the opposite rules so the opposite rules. Nothing seems possible. That leg which actually can manage bearing the strain is in instant recoil, dragging you down on the floor with it.

Or at least it feels like it does. Or should.

The car is no better. It used to fit me perfectly, and therefore I fit the car perfectly. But one of the axioms of a bucket seat is that everywhere is uphill out of it.

It seemed so desirable at the time. I guess it still must to the Great Unwashed, perhaps the Great Washed. (I pledge you this: I'll quit checking you for your washed/unwashed status if you'll quite checking me.) At any rate, bench seats are still not among the standard options. Push bars are not bolted in. Nor welded.

Toilets are better, but only if you were warned in time to go out and pick up the elevated seat with the side bars. And warnings also apply to those physical ones which wake you in time before your.... Oh wait, we've talked about this too.

Nevermind then. Next month will find you with increasing familiarity with soapy liquid. Visitors,  just try a quick swipe of Vicks under the nostrils.

At least be polite!

Speaking of, everybody who talked to me about home care hit the volume-control-off button in their vocal cords when they discussed this. Yes, we got a shower seat, and a hand-held. Even a grab bar. But there was something else in everybody's sentence about what to use when it's desirable to get the body clean and wet while keeping the incised part of the thigh dry. Dirty, if you have to leave it that way around the newly opened microbial highway to Heather Heaven, but for now, DRY! UNTIL WE TELL YOU TO, THAT'S FOR HOW LONG.  It was assumed that whatever that magic word was, it was heard. Understood. And referred to something actually on hand once at home. That, or that the past/future person to discuss this did/will have done the job better.

It goes something like this: "And they've all told you about               have a sufficient supply, right?"

They all managed to skip over that wince on the face as I shifted my weight. Nobody saw the dull gaze off into space as the latest meds finally hit, making everything passing by for the next 23.7 seconds vanish into the ether. However long it took for me to register that I did not, in fact, know what we were talking about, and further that it might be appropriate if we both made sure I actually did possess such arcane knowledge, the next topic was on the agenda.

I'm sure it's much the same thing going on when I suddenly realize I do not recognize this actor on the screen, have no idea of his motivation or culpability, and barely can note nor express that the background color has just flashed in a color not seen for three edits.

It's almost as if one has experienced a brief hallucination. But of course we're not having those, are we? Surely not on these meds? I mean, wouldn't it be way more fun if we were? So likely it was just a brief nap or something.

But hey, if anybody out there knows what that secret is.....

And, ummm, if those really are hallucinations, let's not bother the doctor about it right this minute, eh?

Ohh, wow! That's an actual color?