“If pain didn’t hurt so much, I wouldn’t mind.” Larry Feinstein
I love the Big Lebowski and I am not sure if I have ever seen a funnier movie. The Coen Brothers have their own special take on life, creating unique characters, scenarios and dialogue that seems to be made up in the moment. You would swear Jeff Bridges, as my idle, the Dude, is too stoned to remember his lines, so he ad libs. I’ll tell you why this comes to mind in just a second.
John Goodman is Walter, a Viet Nam vet, who is so damaged by the war that he is a walking, hair-trigger, ready to go off on anything with trivial provocation. He is a real life caricature of the worst of war, but the Coen Brothers have given him a redemptive quality. In other words, you gotta love him. Bowling is central to the story and there’s a particular incident that has been brought to mind by the present circumstance. An opponent accidentally steps over the foul line and Walter calls him out on it. An argument ensues and Walter whips out his pistol, pointing at the perpetrator, cocking it, he yells, “You are in a world of pain.” It is a great scene.
I have been thinking about that scene for days now and I’ve a tale to tell.
Our story begins on Wednesday, January 2nd at around 10AM HST and the culprit is a carton of avocados. I innocently reached for the box in a matter of fact manner. Holding with both arms around it, I began to walk from my car. Within a matter of seconds, I went from thinking I felt a strange pain in my thigh, to having serious difficulty walking, wincing with each stride of my left leg.
Being stubborn, an affliction of mine, often encourages my delicate hold on sanity to run amok. While I was certain something was seriously wrong with my leg, I had no frame of reference. This is one of those instances where the mule becomes an ass. The truth is, I needed to be paying attention years before now and the price has been exacted out of my hide.
Around thirteen years ago, I was in a canoe mishap, smack in the middle of Hanamaulu Bay, probably the most compromised body of water on the island. I got a serious cut on my leg, which quickly became dangerously infected, in spite of my immediate visit and subsequent treatment in the ER. I spent two weeks in the hospital, had three surgeries, a month at home in world class pain, waiting for a follow up skin graft. Rehab was a bitch and I fought to get my leg back. I don’t think it is our inclination to nurture trauma, and we quickly evaporate the intensity, assuming we are fortunate to get passed it.
I’ve had a fairly aggressive exercise regimen for years now. Running and yoga are pretty much a daily diet. Through the magic of hindsight, the vision of assholes, it is now painfully clear I should have been much more considerate of my left leg, which the doctors were close to taking from me back then. For you body people, I have focused totally on flexibility, at the expense of strengthening, disrespecting my leg.
In a way, my hamstring was an accident waiting to happen and if it wasn’t avocados, it could have been shaving, my face, not my legs. After stubbornly irritating my hammie for two days, I went to the ER. Having had an extended stay years ago, I became a fan of nurses, the heart and soul of these institutions. The system itself is a whole other story and that’s not where I’m going. The only observation I want to make about my short sojourn in the ER is that no one even touched my leg, except the guy with the imaging machine. I left there last Friday morning, clueless as to the problem, let alone the treatment.
Saturday, the 5th, I visited my clinic, in order to get a referral for P.T. During my cursory exam, minimal testing reached a confident conclusion it was likely the hamstring and not sciatica. At the moment, there’s a little more work to be done on my leg, but I am getting ahead here.
You know, it had to only be a matter of time before I talked about traveling all over the internet, looking for perfect answers, telling me precisely what I had, ending with, “ Don’t worry Larry, you’ll be fine.” Instead, I kept running into the acronym, RICE: Rest, ice, Compression, Elevation. Now, here is where that stubborn streak gets turned completely around, mutating into a willful discipline
On Sunday, January 6th, I banished myself to the bed, where I have been pretty much ever since, just finishing my fifth day, nothing at all changes, a kind of Groundhogs Day. I spend a fair amount of my time alone and when you are incapable of doing pretty much everything, it pushes you places you wouldn’t make into a children’s fairytale. When walking is so painful, you plan your trips from the bed, not wanting to get frozen by a jolt of lightening, radiating from hip to knee.
I think I may be just over the boundary line between tolerable and intolerable and I feel like I am exploding with story. You know, when I took my solo motorcycle ride through CA and OR a number of years ago, it seemed like I couldn’t stop writing. My visit to Tuscany was the stuff of magic and I was thrilled to share it.
Finally, we get to a World of Pain.
I am now kind of like a deer frozen in the headlight, time suspended, as the pain subsides and movement returns. i am finally on the other side of the kind of pain that has no name. I have purposely waited until its grip loosened. When it’s really bad, you can’t find any place to hide, there’s no escape, nothing works, no relief. You are running a race from it as fast as you can and you keep losing. I have had one PT session so far and that’s part of a story to come.
You will have to forgive me, because I am sitting on my ass, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Well, that’s not quite true. I am totally committed to RICE. While I realize I have to write about this, you don’t have to read it. If you are one of the few to have gotten this far, thank you. It just seems like I ought to write this story and I hope you read the next one.
Thank you, Laura.