Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, August 03, 2023

Sunday I hurt my foot, and I'm in a Unna boot wrap with a walking boot, and you know what?

I am not a great person to be around right now. Indeed, I'm really not a happy camper. My pain is around 7 out of 10 for various reasons, the NSAIDs and acetaminophen that I can take are doing nothing. I'm trying not to be irritable, but I am. I had a decent day at work, I made it through, tomorrow is Friday, lots of good things, but at this precise moment I just want to kick off the stupid boot, get into shorts (have I mentioned the AC seems to be broken, so we turned it off?), get into bed, squeeze a teddy bear, ice my foot, and let Ed Sheeran music take me away.  At the moment I think Dolly Parton could come into my room and I'd growl at her, and that's an unpardonable sin.

All over a toe, which turned into a foot, which necessitated a boot, which exacerbated pain in my back and knees, which reminded me that I'm out of fibromyalgia medicine, which means I'm in a flareup, when I'm still getting over sciatica, so my body feels like it's burning on the inside and outside and I just am therefore no fun.

And it makes me mad at myself because it's not like I have cancer, or some incurable disease, or I'm in a wartorn country, or have just lost a child, or all the other things that are so much more painful and significant.  This too shall pass. But at this moment, I'm having trouble reminding myself of that or breathing through the pain (I was never good at meditation anyway).  I'm good at low chronic pain. But this is acute and all over, in every joint, in every muscle, and I just want to scream.

Instead I'll get into my bed, also known as the cocoon of love, and ice my foot, and hug my teddy bear, and try to lose myself in music and drift off into the land of dreams. For tomorrow is another day.

No comments: