Pain
We all have pain from time to time and how we cope with it depends very much on our attitude to it. So labour pain can be hell - but millions of women cope well with it in the hope that the outcome will be a healthy baby. Because I have a somewhat abnormal womb that didn't contract properly, I don't think I ever suffered proper labour pain. When I was in labour having my daughter Emily, people kept offering me gas and air and I kept politely declining until finally I accepted just to keep everyone happy.
Other pain is hard to bear and people with terminal illnesses frequently choose to have less of it, even if it shortens their life. The Communist was a pharmacist and he made up many prescriptions of "mist. terminalis" - a heavy concoction of drugs to keep the person sedated until they died.
The pain that I have at the moment is not a good kind of pain. After my first baby died in 1984 I was very ill for a long time and, after being almost immobile for about three months, I had a DVT (deep-vein thrombosis) which was not diagnosed until some weeks later, when it moved up to my lung and became a pulmonary embolism - really, I am very lucky to be around and I must remember that.
The pain from the DVT was astonishing, and I think I have quite a high pain threshold. If you imagine the worst toothache you have ever had, and then imagine it in the whole of your leg, that's what it was like, and it was like that all the time, reducing me to a shaking, sobbing heap.
Over the years it gradually got better. It did hurt all the time, but only when I thought about it. So when someone asked "How's your leg?" I would be aware that it hurt, but the rest of the time I could kind of screen it out.
But now, after over twenty years, pain has, over the past few months, suddenly erupted again at the top of my foot where it joins the ankle. After a visit to a physiotherapists and a podiatrist the general consensus seems to be that it's to do with the circulation, caused by the DVT.
I hate it. It hurts like hell and it reminds me of losing my baby. Also, it makes it hard to do my job, which involves sitting at a desk for much of the day - exactly the position my bad leg likes least. I can walk absolutely fine - eight miles along Sutton Bank recently - it's standing still that's the worst, and sitting on a high chair the second-worst. "Everyone else I see can sit but they can't walk," said the podiatrist. "You can walk but you can't sit, and that's quite unusual."
Ibuprofen will get rid of the pain for a few hours but I don't want to take it all the time because I know it's not good for me in other ways.
One thing is, the pain doesn't show - so nobody thinks to give me their seat because I look perfectly all right, and because I don't want to be that person with the bad leg, I don't tend to ask them to.
My GP is referring me to a circulation-doctor next, though the podiatrist did say "but there may not be much they can do." I don't like having all this pain, and I don't like being the self-pitying moaner it turns me into.
Other pain is hard to bear and people with terminal illnesses frequently choose to have less of it, even if it shortens their life. The Communist was a pharmacist and he made up many prescriptions of "mist. terminalis" - a heavy concoction of drugs to keep the person sedated until they died.
The pain that I have at the moment is not a good kind of pain. After my first baby died in 1984 I was very ill for a long time and, after being almost immobile for about three months, I had a DVT (deep-vein thrombosis) which was not diagnosed until some weeks later, when it moved up to my lung and became a pulmonary embolism - really, I am very lucky to be around and I must remember that.
The pain from the DVT was astonishing, and I think I have quite a high pain threshold. If you imagine the worst toothache you have ever had, and then imagine it in the whole of your leg, that's what it was like, and it was like that all the time, reducing me to a shaking, sobbing heap.
Over the years it gradually got better. It did hurt all the time, but only when I thought about it. So when someone asked "How's your leg?" I would be aware that it hurt, but the rest of the time I could kind of screen it out.
But now, after over twenty years, pain has, over the past few months, suddenly erupted again at the top of my foot where it joins the ankle. After a visit to a physiotherapists and a podiatrist the general consensus seems to be that it's to do with the circulation, caused by the DVT.
I hate it. It hurts like hell and it reminds me of losing my baby. Also, it makes it hard to do my job, which involves sitting at a desk for much of the day - exactly the position my bad leg likes least. I can walk absolutely fine - eight miles along Sutton Bank recently - it's standing still that's the worst, and sitting on a high chair the second-worst. "Everyone else I see can sit but they can't walk," said the podiatrist. "You can walk but you can't sit, and that's quite unusual."
Ibuprofen will get rid of the pain for a few hours but I don't want to take it all the time because I know it's not good for me in other ways.
One thing is, the pain doesn't show - so nobody thinks to give me their seat because I look perfectly all right, and because I don't want to be that person with the bad leg, I don't tend to ask them to.
My GP is referring me to a circulation-doctor next, though the podiatrist did say "but there may not be much they can do." I don't like having all this pain, and I don't like being the self-pitying moaner it turns me into.
posted by Daphne at 4:10 pm
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