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| A Girl in Pain by Mila Aleksic |
Greetings
from the basement of Gestapo Headquarters.
When
I was a kid, I watched a lot of WW II movies on TV. My dad served in the Pacific
Theater and saw heavy combat. My mother was obsessed with Chamberlain's betrayal
of her natal country, Czechoslovakia, at the Munich conference. And, of course,
my dad's family was from Poland.
WW II
movies often included a scene where the good guy was under Nazi control. They were
torturing him and the audience wondered if he'd break or not, and reveal the
underground's plans. The last time I saw such a scene in a theater, it was in the
2016 movie Anthropoid, about the
Czech and Slovak assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. That
film's torture was much more graphic than Hollywood Golden Era, black-and-white
films could ever be.
The
movie that affected me the most was the 1946 Jimmy Cagney movie, 13 Rue Madeleine. Sharkey (Cagney) knows
the date and time of the D-Day invasion. He is captured by Nazis, who torture
him to get him to reveal the secret. He doesn't break. The Allies know where
Sharkey is being held, and bomb the building, killing both him and his
torturers. Sharkey has the last laugh. Before dying, he laughs in his
torturer's face.
I
used to watch those films and contemplate how rough it would be to be tortured.
A few
years back I had to have surgery. One after-effect of this surgery has been
pain such as I did not know the human body could feel. I remember the exact day
it began. It was just after surgery. I woke up, realized I had to pee, and
tried to get out of bed. I could not. I had to crawl.
It
isn't constant. Some days are worse than others. The length and intensity of
attacks vary greatly. Day before yesterday was hell on earth.
I've
been to four different doctors, and I've been given all kinds of tests. They
don't know what is causing this pain. They have nothing to treat it. They have
thrown any number of drugs at me. None have had any impact.
And
that's it.
Why talk
about it now. The day before yesterday was really bad and a couple of people
were kind enough to notice my absence from Facebook.
Why I
don't talk about it. I mentioned it once on Facebook and people did what I
hoped they would not. Ask for more clinical details and offer unsolicited
advice.
If
someone mentions a medical issue to you, and doesn't provide many clinical details,
don't ask for them. Many of us don't want to provide you with clinical details.
We talk about those with our health-care providers. You are not our health-care
provider, and it isn't nice to play doctor. Playing doctor is invasive and
dehumanizing. Focus on the human being,
not the symptom.
Too,
pain is inappropriate in polite society, just like intercourse and defecation.
It's a private thing.
When
attacks happen at work, I hide it. One day it was so bad I couldn't hide it. A
coworker hovered over me. "What can I get you? Whom can I call?"
I
said, "You can't get me anything, and there is no one to phone."
She
insisted. "You are obviously in horrible pain. Let me do something."
And I
said, "There is nothing you can do." I felt I had answered her
question and I wanted her to stop nagging me to provide her with a magic wand I
do not own. Eventually she did stop, but it took a while.
When, years ago, I mentioned it on Facebook, someone said, "Is your pain in body part X? I
know what that is. This is how you fix it." I can't tell you how utterly unhelpful
this comment was. The poster is not a doctor, and her social media diagnosis
and prescription was worse than worthless.
Another
person said, "They have something for that." I can't say how stupid and
mean that comment was. I am careful about using words like "stupid"
and "mean." And yes this is
otherwise a nice person.
I'm just
saying here why I have not spoken about this much. I do appreciate the folks
who noticed my absence and asked why I was not present. Doing so is kind and I appreciate
it.
I
guess, as ever, I just want to say, you have no idea what is going on in
someone else's life. So being kind is a good default position.
