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 […]