Right now, my obsession is with pain, or more to the point, being without it. While there are several loci of pain on my body at the moment, the two most active, the Krakatoa and Vesuvius, are the right and left armpits. Admittedly, I can't only think of one other time when my armpit--and it was the right one--hurt--and that was a temporary reaction to some smelly anti-perspirant. Probably something ill advised, from the Eighties, when one was still occasionally tempted to have every body zone smell like a different designer. Pierre Cardin for the pits was not unthinkable. YSL crotch powder was a distinct possibility. Such innocence we had then.
Thus, the fact that they do hurt at first I explained away. On the left side, I have some tumors that have grown, and they are causing obvious problems--the skin is unhappy, they are sensitive, their subcutaneous antics are why this pain exists--and, too, there may still be some lymph nodes in that area (this is where some of the skin for my facial/neck reconstruction came from, and the muscle that they needed was harvested here from my left pectoralis). On the right, I thought it was obvious that the nodes had become inflamed from my general overall difficulties with drainage, overwhelmed perhaps with all they had to carry--that's why it felt like I was smuggling eggs under there.
My own explanations are artful, logical and--to my mind--as close to simple and as evidentiary-based as I can make them. They are usually wrong, too.
No, these lumps are cancerous, and were it possible for you to shove a hard-boiled egg under your skin in your pit, it would hurt. I don't know if these are really the size of a hard boiled egg but at least one of them feels like it is so I'll lean on that illustration.
I am still confused/impressed with how modern medicine deals with pain. Virtually every one of my appointments the last six months have started with "are you in any pain now" and "how much pain are you in" if yes. I remember going to the doctor, again in the Eighties, and starting with the fact that I was in pain--offered as a fact, upfront--because I was. I recall vividly the ligaments I tore in my right knee in 1984 that were grudgingly offered Tylenol with codeine (and don't expect a refill).
I have consistently not been in pain and even when it's been expected, I haven't been--my doctors have all remarked upon it and I've self-surveyed diligently to see if I'm masking anything and I don't believe I am or have been. I may have a higher tolerance, but I doubt it. I'm a total bitch if I stub my toe and a paper cut threatens to turn me into a goober addict. And, I'm not overly brave about it. I do ask if a particular shot is going to hurt (Procrit shots hurt, btw).
So the pain mouse came out and the Mark lion jumped. And all I had to do was say the magic words I'm in pain to get pain med 1. And all I needed to do for pain med 2 was say that pain med 1 wasn't cutting it. And doubling pain med 2 was accomplished when I noted I was still in pain and pain med 3 was added. I didn't have to document or provide evidence or play act or point to areas on a doll. The 80's it isn't, and that's for certain.
Don't mistake my wonder for complaint--the part of the story that I like best is that my doctors believe me, because I do try to have a very transparent relationship with them. Better still, I do like not suffering, too. Do the pits and their other pain centers make me do so? Decidedly yes, to the point of not sleeping, to the point of nausea, to the point of diffuse concentration.
It has surprised me to be in this situation, and previously, to have not been, within what seems a short space of time. Obviously I'm lacking a good sense of how long something should take before it hurts, but I always believed it required a longer bake. Apparently, like Athena from Zeus' head, it can be sudden and--while artful--gruesome in the short run.
The elephant that is sitting in the corner of this room is that the pain is here from cancer, and that cancer is causing it, and I have to fight it again so soon. The elephant is colored gray but he has some bright yellow nails....not quite into swinging mode, not quite out of the cowardice mood. The occasional drink from the "I'm dying" pond refreshes the poor chap's drama requirements, I guess, but we hope to bitter the water as quickly as possible. Besides, it's time for the Mark Lion to do a bit more work, much as male lions have been proven by observation to be remarkably lazy in the wild, self-indulgent, and probably as scared of large paw-piercing thorns as any of us.
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