The worst days are barbed wire barricades and broken glass on top of high walls – creative responses to pain
At last, the receptionist in the pain clinic calls my name. A long-term relationship with pain has made me a regular visitor in this clinic but the waiting doesn’t get any easier.
It is a place where people wait in a silence loud with shouts of protest about how they have become strangers in their own lives.
The clinic nurse, pen in hand, flicks through my file. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?” she asks. My brain freezes. How can I quantify my pain on someone else’s scale?
My current pain can only be rated in relation to my past pain. A series of disconnected pictures unrolls like a kaleidoscope through my mind.
Bewildered
In the first I am a child, experiencing the awesome beauty of snow for the very time. I am bewildered that something which looks so fluffy and warm could be so cold and wet.
When my hand-knit blue mittens become sodden and useless, I use my bare hands to continue to explore the texture and possibilities of this mysterious magical substance.
Soon my hands lose all feeling. Instinctively I retreat to warm them at the blazing fire in the kitchen range.
But the heat of the fire does not warm my hands, instead scalding tears warm my cold cheeks as spasms of stabbing pain of the most agonising intensity shoot into my fingers.
I can rate my pain today against the sharply packed shocks of that memory.
Pain can still make me cry. How do I rate pain that reaches in and pulls tears out of my eyes, not sad tears but the sort of tears that spring out when you crack your head on the corner of an open cupboard door?
The kaleidoscope shifts and another picture unrolls.
Timmy, my big tabby tomcat, has taken up his usual territorial position on my lap. The ritual is the same as always. He circles around on my knee, elegantly winds his tail around his body, curls up and looks up at me expectantly.
I pet his large round whiskered head and rub behind his ears, my fingers making ridges in his warm gold tinged fur.
He sinuously stretches his neck with pleasure and vibrates with his loud contented purring.
Then, without warning, he changes position, crouches down, draws his body up, slashes his right forepaw through the air and scratches me.
His claw breaks the skin and draws a line of blood down the length of my bare arm.
Scratch
I can rate my pain against the memory of that traitorous sharp scratch.
There are many other memories that pain reaches back into and it sometimes seems to gather them all together and the kaleidoscope rolls so fast the pictures become a blur.
These are the worst days. The worst days are barbed wire barricades and broken glass on the top of high walls. They are the squeal and shriek of rusty hinges being forced open.
On the worst days, I fall into a hole of pain that I can’t get out of. I become a dot in so much pain. Every thing else about me disappears.
The worst days are always landing on the snakes in a game of snakes and ladders, but where there are snakes there are ladders.
The makers of pain scales concentrate on the snake days.
They neglect the days when I land on a ladder, days of unexpected bliss when pain is out of town.
In-between
Pain scales also neglect all those in-between days, those days when I land on the squares, those squares on the snakes and ladders board where, although I may miss the ladders, I also avoid the snakes.
These are the ordinary days where pain and I negotiate a truce.
These are the ordinary days when I fit into my life again.
The nurse shifts in her seat waiting for my reply.
The busy waiting room throbs with the unacknowledged, of the pain scale, of those still waiting to be seen
Pass, I answer.
And another thing is
Other Responses: from Creative Writing Workshops led by poet Michael McCarthy at Tallaght Library and organised by the National Centre for Arts and Health with Chronic Pain Ireland.
By a woman (52) who suffers from chronic nerve pain
And another thing is . . . No, I don’t want the name of your homeopath, reiki therapist, or the guy in Mexico who prescribes caffeine enemas for everything from mastitis to malignant melanoma. I’ve tried them all.
Colonic irrigation? Er, no. It wouldn’t help. But it helps to rebalance the gut microflora. I try again. It wouldn’t help ME, I don’t have a colon anymore, remember?
No, I don’t want to try a macrobiotic diet. It would not be good for me – on the contrary, it would cause a traffic jam in the remaining segment of my gut that even the Mad Cow roundabout at 5pm on a Friday evening would find difficult to match. It. Wouldn’t. Help. Me.
No, I’m not better. I’m not going to get better and the sooner you can accept that then the sooner I can make the most of what time I have left without having to waste it making things better for you. Please just listen. Your expectations are harder to deal with than my own.
By a man (58) who developed chronic spinal pain and fibromyalgia after a car crash.
And another thing is that just because I look okay, it doesnt mean that I am okay. Most days I dress to look well, even if I have nowhere special to go. Just because I can smile and can share a joke with you, it doesn’t mean that I am not in absolute agony.
Today, for example, I am what my dear old mum used to call, all dolled up. I look in the mirror and see myself as you may see me.
But that belies the fact that my loving wife has had to help me into the shower and wash me ever so gently, so as not to cause me extra pain. Then, she tenderly helps me to dress. Her touch gives me more comfort and ease than any of my morphine or lidocaine patches, or any other combination of medications can. The blessing of her love, and the unselfconscious charity with which she cares for me, enables me to have a life. She assists me to live with and through my pain. She nurtures my bruised soul with a fierce tenderness that takes my breath away.
My admiration for her is boundless. She has helped me, one step at a time, to retrieve my creativity, which I was so afraid I had lost. My gratitude to this beautiful woman is both profound and eternal.
As the song says, “How sweet it is to be loved by you.” Thank you so very much, my lovely, darling and very best friend, Mary B.
