A mascot for injury.

Ice doesn’t work. Neither does heat. The supplements were a waste of money and now I have diarrhea to contend with on top of all this. It’s a long ways under and even farther going around when your disc is slipped. Should I use the electro shock thing? Did I have enough magnesium? Is it my psoas or QL? The arthritic hip? But the other one doesn’t feel like this. I’m telling you, that tear in 2016 did me in. Feels like it could be my kidney though. Another stone? The pain goes from here, alll the way down to here. And then sometimes my toes, but I think that’s something different. And my prostate of course, but who’s doesn’t? The urologist told me last time that alcohol can help flush it out, but I know it’s not a stone. That was different. Could still be a reason to drink though. How much Tylenol can I take if I finish the whiskey? How much whiskey do we even have left? I hope it’s enough. I should just drink water. Everything will be worse tomorrow if I get drunk tonight. Either way I should eat something. That means standing up. And that means getting off this floor. I’ll do it in a bit. Not now. Right now is the worst time I can think of.

         When I see my children running and flipping, jumping and stomping- I want to grab them by the shoulders and explain in graphic detail what arthritis is until they cry. I read all the time that staying active is supposed to keep you young; I find this sentiment to be misinformed and/or incomplete. I believe you will find many other manual workers that would agree with me. Probably a few athletes too. All sorts. One day you are healthy and feel so good you never even knew it, the next you’re in pain from then on out. There are far too many hands and wrists out there- blown out knees, backs and hips- shoulders, necks and hearts, that are torn to shreds but ignored for the sake of social grace or employment. And medical coverage. So that they too might have access to the never-ending let downs of misdiagnoses and unreliable treatments. For the sake of honor to some, sanity for others, we let ourselves play this little game called hope. There’s nothing to cure if you can convince yourself it isn’t really happening. Not to me, anyway. Maybe to you but not to me.

After the first kidney stone, when nothing felt normal and the urologist informed me that I also had prostatitis, the next thing he told me was there was nothing to be done about it. His advice was to try and relax. When I confided in my primary that it was becoming difficult to move much in the mornings, she said I was just getting old. I was 37 at the time. At least the ortho had the decency to file my hip bones down a little before sending me on my way. At least I could feel the needles at the acupuncturist and hear the popping at the Chiro. If you can’t cure me, at least give me a show. If only for a brief period, let me believe that something might have changed while I was here. You never know, maybe a placebo effect will kick in- but I can’t even hope for that if all you do is tell me is to come back in a month if the pain hasn’t stopped. All that does is make me want to chew your face off.

I have injected my body with internet bought, grey market peptides - I have fasted and stretched and mediated until I sobbed. I have changed my diet and given up vices. I have taken dirty pills. I have taken healthy pills. There are moments of reprieve. The walk of fire has taught me to savor them. But pain always returns in one fashion or another. For reasons I will never know, it seems hell bent on getting to know me.

  This whiskey is going to help. It’s going to work fast and chopper me out of here. No more living under the surface of these haunted waters, pretending I’m not terrified of when I might be able to breathe easy again, pretending I don’t think I will be down here forever. Pretending to be philosophical about it. Pretending I don’t want to wail out. Pretending I don’t hate you for not being under here with me. The whiskey is going to help. If it doesn’t I’m not sure what more I can do.

I will roll to my left and then pivot with my right on the coffee table. If I can get upright then I can make it to the freezer. I will take one sip and then back to the bathroom to purge this Bromelain from my still freshly seared rectum. I will clean up as best I can and then take a second sip. Maybe a third. I will take 2 Tylenol and I will drink some water. I will lay back down until the kids get home. The pain is always worse when I hear their voices. It’s not irritation; it is failure. If I can calm the wolves that chew on my sinew then it may quell their incessant howling in my head, then I can be there for my kids. I can listen. I can follow along. Then maybe I can remember these times differently one day.

I read online that the human body is something like fifty percent bacteria. I also saw online that barn owls -or any owl I suppose- under all those feathers, are just regular little bird bodies with regular little bird skeletons inside. This is me. This is what a mascot for injury looks like. Bacterium laden feathers, a twisted neck and back, searching in the night, flipping through my phone for some tiny morsel in the darkness- little baby bird bones inside, bending under the weight of it all.

Look at this ceiling. I need to paint this ceiling. Or maybe I just never look at the ceiling again. What I need to do is finish digging the trench. If I make it to the freezer, I should seize the opportunity and take more than a sip. Before the kids get home, I should get prepared and put my back brace on, wedge some ice in there and try again. Pretty sure it’s a bit frost bitten though, not sure I was supposed to do it for so long before. The skin looks blue and purple as if it’s dying. And it burns. I don’t want to touch it. I don’t really want to move at all. But before the alcohol hits my liver I should eat something. And I should drink water.

I need to find something to motivate me off of the floor and out of this position. It would be too easy and then too difficult to stay. Or could I? I think of the gurus that stayed in fixed position. There could be murals of my bed sores growing deep roots into the polyurethane of this yoga mat. People could visit and toss flower petals on my face. But then they would ask questions and expect me to be something greater than I am. That would make me want out of the whole deal. I suppose it would get me off the floor though. Is there not a quote or story, a mantra or a memory that can do the heavy lifting for me? I can quote the Stoics to you. I can quote the Russians and the mystics and the poets and the tombstones- hell, I’ll do you one better and send you the links on IG- but none of it helps.

So I try to conjure the memory of the boy outside the bakery, back when I was a teenager in some far off land, in some far off time. He had no fingers. No toes. No real arms or legs relative to my predicament. He was small and innocent with blinded, protruding eyes and a bowl of change on his lap. His mother stood guard beside and made sure that we all saw him and that she saw how much was in the bowl. A dear, sweet man, a friend of mine, that lived a very hard life once told me it was important not give them any money. He said that it would only teach them to depend on others.

“But it seems to be working so far”, I offered.

“But one day it might not”, he countered.

To this day, I still cannot understand his point. Was he suggesting that to let him starve would be more honest? Did he really think those small notes and coins in the bowl were doing much to reupholster the hell they were no doubt confined to? This family had no access to medical help or education- was he suggesting that helping them was some sort of defiance against the fates? But even the bakery boy cant make me feel better about this back pain. It’s been decades since and I can no longer see him clearly. At some point, all memories become contrived. Even in destructive form, they become self-serving anecdotes, drenched in disassociation. The agony of another’s existence fades to the point of searching a stocked fridge for just the right kind of treat. What’s gonna hit the spot today? And he is somewhere else now, or nowhere at all, but I am still right here, on this floor. I know his pain was far worse, I am merely a mascot. He has been fighting tigers in the arena since birth while I sit watching from the cheap seats with my little hoot-hoot horn. But I cannot feel his pain. I can only feel mine. I am selfish and weak.

Think of the failed ligation of ’10. Think of the stripe of blood across the doctor’s coat after he cut open the thrombosis. Think of the crease in your hat from biting down on it. Think of the appendicitis of ’12. Or the hemorrhoidectomy of ’13. When the the furnace busted on the day of surgery and she kept the trailer warm for over a month by chopping oak during a badly timed freeze, all the while making sure you got your pill every four hours and ate enough saltines to keep a pulse. I remember reading about lobotomies while the bathwater grew cold much too quickly, as it always did. I remember thinking the pain would never stop. I remember when I farted and popped a stitch. I remember the catheter bag perched precariously on the tub’s edge. My ears became so infected from sleeping in bathwater for weeks that I thought the smell was coming from my nephew’s diaper at the Christmas party. Then after some investigating, I realized I could barely hear and that my earwax was blue. I remember pouring rubbing alcohol into them and only then realizing what a horrible idea that was. It is not only the boy at the bakery’s pain I cannot feel, I can’t even feel my own from the past. Why would I want to? While putting the kids to sleep the other night, during a conversation about my son’s stubbed toe, my daughter declared, “Yeah! And I got hurt yesterday! Did I?” It’s a good question, kid. Did any of us?

My buddy knows chronic pain well. He was once a mascot like me, but I am fearful that he will one day be drafted and turn pro. It started around the age of 30, and now ten years of increasing symptoms later, ulcers grow on his bladder wall and make urine feel like holding gasoline. I have not seen him in too long, but he tells me that it is not unusual to use the bathroom upwards of 40 times a day. If he sleeps more than 2 hours without waking in the night, he considers this a win. My hollow bird bones would have cracked long ago. A few years back when my prostatitis kicked up, I had a couple months where I’d have to pee 15 or 20 times a day- I wanted to reach inside and tear out whatever wiring was causing this. I got lucky, symptoms have improved, but he has not. Living in a workshop along with his dog, dander and sawdust piling in the industrial crevices of this dilapidated warehouse, invading the evolution of his system with every breath, possibly weaponizing it against itself into some twisted, infinite loop of autoimmunity- I wonder what might lift him from this seemingly endless torture. Should I tell him to relax? That he is just getting old? Would helping be in defiance of the fates? But I nor the docs can neither feel his pain nor help. The bacterium has overloaded his bird bones and should something not change soon, I am afraid that he will snap.

And there it was. That was the thought that will lift me from this floor. If he can piss 40 times a day, sleep like an inmate in some interrogation nightmare, and describe his urethra like an inflamed pinhole attempting to empty a dam full of acid- and yet still get up every morning to walk his dog and work and laugh when given the opportunity- then I can stack these bones until they are upright again. I can make it to the freezer. I can empty my colon. I can clean myself up. I can put a smile on my god damned stupid face and realize- thanks to his suffering- that I am not broken, but merely an everyday coward with time to complain. And I am a barn owl, the actuality of my muscular-skeletal predicaments unknown to anyone but me, me included. And I don’t want to explain arthritis to my children, I want to see them running and flipping and jumping and stomping. They will need those memories as proof one day, just as I need them now. So I will get up off this floor. I will drink the whiskey and then the water. The children will be home soon and I must put on my feathers to cheer from the sidelines. Hoot-hoot.