Thursday, May 12, 2016

Time of life








There comes a time in every middle aged man's life when everything just sort of falls apart. I'm not talking about deadly serious ailments (hopefully), I'm talking about a constellation of peculiar ailments that rain upon one like a clot of falling stars, ugly falling stars. "Ow, there's one! Ow, another one! We must be passing through an asteroid field of pain." And did I say "There comes a time in every middle aged man's life..."? It's probably more like "There comes a few dozen times..."

But I'm not complaining.

My lower back hurts like there's some kind of rod stuck in there. It digs into me if I, well, bend at the waist. You'd be surprised at how convenient bending at the waist is. But it's not working out too great for me, so I don't, when I can help it. I sit up very straight, or just stand. This has made my middle upper back really tired and sore. In addition something went wrong with a dose of ibuprofen I took four or five days ago in an attempt to help my back. It gave me this uncomfortable ebbing and falling pressure pain in the upper part of my stomach, actually it might be my lower esophagus. I keep thinking it's gone and it keeps coming back, so I've been reluctant to take any more ibuprofen, which is too bad, because it really helps some. Also the fourth toe on my left foot has something wrong with it. If I roll on it, which I do when walking, if feels like some muscle in it is tearing apart, or almost like it's broken. But it's not bad if I sort of limp in a flat footed way.

So maybe that doesn't sound too bad: Back one, back two, persistent stomach ache, and modestly crippling foot injury. I just noticed a small itchy rash on my right wrist and I'm getting a lot of foot and lower leg cramps. Maybe it isn't much. In a few days I could be totally fine, theoretically. But it is, in one way or another, most of what I am thinking about and dwelling on most of the time right now. I go to work and tons of people, in the course of normal civility, ask me how I'm doing. I don't tell them. The majority of people really, really don't want to hear it. So I tell a little white lie about being "fine" instead of telling them the truth.

I have not been able to extend that courtesy to you.












2 comments:

  1. No, don't talk about your aches and pains. Let me go on thinking of you, mountain breezes blowing through your hair, wrestling with Natoma over some Alpine berry patch. Why expose me to such harsh light? Why can't you go on giving with your magic and paper lanterns?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, like I said, I have not here been able to extend that courtesy to you. But what with your comment getting dumped to spam, and only just rescued from it, time enough has passed to where everything is good enough now for me to go on giving with my magic and paper lanterns like, all the time.

      My hair though is a tad thin. Mountain breezes sort of more ruffle my ears, and Natoma could always out wrestle me, no matter where we are in the timeline, what with him being a Grizzly and all.

      Delete

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