That’s the Name of the Pain
It’s been, all things considered, a week of pains of one sort or another.
Nothing major or you could be sure I’d have been here writing about it as
soon as I got off the phone with my no-win no-fee accident specialist
legal firm. Just doses of the sort of pain that life throws up every so
often to remind us that we need only be a bullet or a bottle of pills away
from a better place.
Firstly I made the mistake – the foolish mistake obviously – of watching
Donnie Darko last Sunday. It was a good movie – very thought provoking and
one which was immeasurably improved by the immediate watching of the
director’s commentary. So don’t buy the cheapo budget release or you won’t
know what’s going on. The film wasn’t the source of the pain but it was
the cause of it. Just sitting and watching it triggered off my bad
shoulder. It has hurt ever since – sometimes more than others but I’m only
a simple movement away from a reminder that its there and it always will
be.
I was on a chair putting things on top of a fitted bookcase when I lost my
balance as a wee nipper and fell groundwards. My right hand was clutching
the top of the case for balance and remained clutching for a bit too long.
Something was evidently damaged. It was one of those things that you
didn’t really notice at the time. But it is the only logical explanation
as to why one shoulder is so much worse than the other. By and large they
go through the same stuff on a daily basis. They are very close. Not to a
deformed degree I hasten to add.
Today I bought a massage device from Argos to try and sooth the pain. I
got the funny looks that everyone gets when they buy such a device from a
shop. It’s a massager for crying out loud. It has two speeds (grow up
children) and a built in heat thingumy. It’s also got different heads for
achieving different effects. I said grow up children. Since my own massage
attempts have only lead to further pain (never try to follow instructions
from a book) it was clearly the time to try something different.
Then there is the pain inflicted by other people. Pain you have to pay
for. Oh for goodness sake – get your minds out of the gutter and remember
that I’m suffering here. I’m talking about dentists. People who train for
years so they can spend their working lives looking in mouths. Like most
people I’ve wondered why dentists do it. It seems a grim job. Then someone
reminded me that they make a tonne of money and… nope, that’s it. They
make a tonne of money.
I’d only had two fillings in living memory. They were small ones and were
done without a jab at my request. This one was bigger. This was a deep one
– so deep that he couldn’t see anything wrong with the tooth until he
x-rayed it. He was drilling for twenty minutes. Burrowing away with ever
more terrifying drills. This was a man on a mission. Maybe he’d found an
old map which gave him the location of a great treasure. One that was
hidden in the back of my mouth. That seemed unlikely since he’s a dentist
and therefore already has a tonne of money. I was semi numb. He’d given me
four – yes four – injections but then started the burrowing before they’d
really had a chance to take effect. Perhaps he was bored. Certainly the
banter between himself and his glamorous assistant didn’t give any hints
that his was a mind firing in new directions. It wasn’t until the car
journey home that I began to feel the full force of the anaesthetic. But
back to what I shall, for reasons of pride, call The Operation. So he was
drilling like a cat in an Eddie Izzard routine (go watch Unrepeatable and
enjoy) and talking about how he knows another dentist who has a bread
maker in the room next to the waiting room so the whole place smells of
newly baked bread. Every so often he stops and says something in code to
his Debbie McGee which never means well in a dentists. Then we move into a
phase where I seemed to have a massive amount of equipment in my mouth. I
wasn’t in a mood to count but the four available hands didn’t seem
sufficient to hold it all. Maybe in my slightly drugged up state my hands
had turned traitor had joined the enemy camp. I don’t know. But there was
sucking and blowing and drilling and squirting going on in my mouth and
that really isn’t something I’m used to, drugs or no drugs. I came home
and slept in the bath until my mouth had thawed out.
I’m still a hesitant eater, preferring pasta to anything more solid. I’ve
got to go back for another one next month. Not as deep but basically the
same drill. Ha. No pun intended.
There is also the emotional pain of getting emails from someone I’m far
too fond of, the irritating soreness of a spot that won’t fuck the hell
off, the disappointingly regular Saturday headache which results from
getting my one good night’s sleep of the week and the usual collection of
sore fingers resulting from my unfortunate biting habits.
And do I do anything about any of these pains? Do I leave the spot alone
to let it heal? Stop biting my nails? Cut down on chocolate? Nah. I just
moan to My Readers and buy something from the Argos catalogue which makes
the staff think I’m weird.
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