Pain Is a New Thing For Me

Wailing, screaming, and keening were things I was not familiar with, until I got the shingles in a very tender place. Then they became my go-to-noises. My husband had to wear headphones, because it was so loud, so guttural and horrific. He could not take it, and frankly, neither could I. I had never made these sounds before, I did not know I could, but I did. I have new medicine that means I no longer wail or scream. Weirdly, I am also no longer able to stand upright and walk without almost falling down. I am not alarmed because I had twelve kinds of pills before a doctor prescribed something that kept me from spending my whole day screaming, wailing, and keening, begging for death. I am now stumbling around in a fog, but falling back into bed is better than what I had been doing for the past seventeen days. Every once in a while it feels like a tiny devil with a pitchfork puts gasoline on it, and lights it with a campfire and shoves it up my right hip, This is preferable to the fifteen minute intervals it had been happening for seventeen days in a row. These new meds are keeping me down, because I am afraid to get up, but I am snoring in a very comfortable deep sleep, which is so preferable to running around screaming, shrieking, wailing and bawling louder than I have ever bawled in my life. I am a rag doll, only wincing in pain once in a great while rather than every ten minutes. I am understanding drug addicts much better now; maybe they started out just wanting their pain to stop. I had no idea what level of pain a person could endure before this affliction grabbed me and stabbed me and burned me and kept me keening, wailing, and screaming. I believe I will be better at my job now, more empathetic, and less judgemental toward people who wisely decide to reduce their pain.