Posts filed under “Books”
A life of only suffering isn’t
Endurance is possible, but endurance on its own does not equal a full, contributing life. Our purpose in life is not, cannot be, simply to suffer. From Carlyn Zwarenstein’s Opium Eater: The New Confessions.
Legitimate illness
What makes something a disease? And why would some people with migraine fight to have migraine recognized as a disease? Locating migraine in the brain is believed to alleviate personal responsibility, a dynamic that advocates think is important after decades of medical practitioners telling patients that their personalities caused their pain. Identifying migraine as genetic […]
How duration changes the experience of pain
Having some sort of time limit on suffering makes it endurable. It’s the same way that running a marathon is tolerable because you know that it will eventually end. Every step gets you closer to relief. I don’t think I’m a lightweight. I like to believe that I’m an expert on pain, thanks to hours […]
How the expectation of relief changes pain
Pain is a complex experience …I enjoy the waiting. Once I have decided that today is going to be a tramadol day, and I’ve given myself a deadline before which I absolutely will not cave in and take it, my experience of pain is transformed. Rather than grinding and hopeless, it feels charged, electric. The […]
You know you want this
I am very much looking forward to reading You Know You Want This after reading this interview with the author. at 36, I have a handle on power dynamics and gender and all of this stuff. And it just seemed to me that at 20 – which is an adult, officially, at which age it […]
Of course you choose your life’s direction?
To this bone tambourine there is repetition but no script To this bone tambourine lying quietly in A suit is a dried rind that at one time slid Underwater it finds a tree that offers directions for Rest for mimicking arms and legs allows one To stop all the shaking approximate direction To this bone […]
It is endured and then it is gone and you wish it had been so much more
Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties. It was all I could do to get through moment to moment, and each moment felt like an endless hour, yet days slipped silently past. Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as […]