Agony At The Lake

The snippet below is from late March 2023, one of my worst nights of pain since a compound fracture in 2014 and eventual ankle replacement in 2018.

“I deal with chronic pain. Years of pills and a couple surgeries have either been of no relief or made matters worse. I haven't taken pills for pain in over 4 years. Most days are tolerable and easy enough to cope. Today has not been so well. Tonight has been worse than most as it has progressed in intensity that for the past 90 minutes the current sensation has been as if I filled a cast iron pan with coarse gravel, pulled it from a hot oven and stepped on it only to be unable to remove my foot from the continued burning. My arch is feeling repeatedly stabbed while hot molten plastic is solidifying on it, my Achilles feels like fire ants are devouring it, my big toenail like someone is ripping it off slowly with a pliers, cramping pains everywhere in between, all at once, and nothing I can do about it. I consider these severe ones "panic pains" as my mind is incapable of distracting from it and rushing thoughts of "Make it stop! Make it stop! Cut the sonofabitch off! Do anything! Just make it stop!" has been going on this whole time. I want to ice it but know the consequence will be the same pain added with pins & needles of frostbite will make matters worse. So here I lay sleepless, trying at times to massage it out to no avail, trying to get out of my head, pushing my thumbnail into my finger as a distraction of self-inflicted but controllable pain, figuring out which of my many methods will offer relief this time around. Hopefully it starts to subside soon, and that it'll be a long while before they get this bad again.”

This afternoon I had a similar incident that was nearly as bad and lasted around two to three hours. Additional highlights were as if spikes of a medieval ball-and-chain flail had been flung upon the top of my foot, splitting open the underside. Less than ten minutes from the moderate onset to extreme pain, nothing seemed to make it subside. I think AL may be traumatized having witnessed it this time. We survived, but our eyes are burning from all the tears.

As bad as it may seem and the infrequency of occurrence, I’d still rather persevere through it than take a chance on paralysis or any other additional complications another procedure may bring.

p.s. If you are the holder of a voodoo doll with my likeness, I sincerely wish for you a perpetually insatiable appetite and explosive diarrhea to go with it, and maybe being stuck in traffic frequently, too. That is all.