The pain... that beautiful wonderful whole body experience that takes me to a place where no-one else exists except me, myself and I (the Holy Trinity of self).
Ive been ignoring quite a badly torn rotator cuff for months. I had the imaging done, was told if I didn’t have injections I was facing a potential surgery in the not too distant future to ensure I still had full mobility. In the same breath, the doctor asked me what I did for a living to have caused it. I had no idea what I’d done to it, just that it ached when I slept or did certain movements, so said as much. He leaned in and asked again, but this time added he had never seen as much damage to a shoulder (not just the rotator cuff) short of a 70yr-old man that had worked at physical labour since his teens. So I said it was probably horse related. He asked if I was still working with them, I smiled and said it wasn’t work. He then asked “how can you do anything at all when you’re in that much pain?” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing at all.
I waited for his report, I did my research, I went back to my own doctor to ask what to do. I was told injection first and hope for the best. So off I trundled today to have the injection. It was the same doctor today...
So I saw a smile in his eyes as he walked through the door, his mask hid the rest. I smiled in return, though I know it didn’t reach my eyes. “Ah the lady who feels nothing! Well you’re going to feel this!” So we idly chatted, he prepped me, explained what was to happen. I saw the needle, the size of it, looked where he had said it was going to go. He told me to look away, I didn’t. I saw him poke it in, how deep it went as he guided it with the imaging machine, watched the screen and watched the needle. He suddenly stopped and said “omg, I’m so sorry, I can stop if it’s hurting”. I looked at him and asked why. “You’re crying.” And I was.
”Oh it doesn’t hurt, please keep going,” was all I could muster. And it didn’t. I barely felt it. How could I tell him that what he was doing wasn’t hurting me, but that what it meant, the pain he was going to take away, that was what was hurting me. That dull ache was going to disappear; that one thing I could depend on making me feel human, alive, real, me - he was taking it away from me. He sat after he was finished, let me put my clothes back on while he turned his back, gave me as much dignity as he could to allow me to gain some bit of composure. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I sat down again when I was finished assuming he had directions to give me.
He turned and looked at me, but this time his eyes saw ME. There was a softness and a hardness in his, almost a judgement and a gentle sympathy at the same time; a criticism and a concern. I held my breath, waited, and then it came “why did you wait so long to go to your doctor about this?” The answer was simple: “I didn’t go to her about this, I went to her for something else and she noticed the swelling.” He was completely taken aback. He looked down and paused before the next question came, I wasn’t expecting this one: “are you ok?” And I laughed. My shoulder was starting to hurt more, he had told me it would, and the Holy Trinity feel powerful when I replied to him: “to someone like you, I’ll never be ok.”
I was leaving the room when he called me back. “Turn up the music so no-one can hear you scream.” I looked back at him, blank and confused. “And when you think you’ve finished screaming, scream some more.” My smile reached my eyes this time, though I quickly dropped my gaze.
I sashayed my way out of that room, down the corridor, out the doors. I tore my mask off my face, skipped back to the car. Spotify was my closest friend all the way home. He was right, and the Holy Trinity loved every divine second of it all.
