Better

 

Only you know how you feel. This reasoning rule of thumb comes after a thorough few minutes of how am I and have things changed and I will be my old self before long. Actually, I think to myself, I don’t want to be my old self. My old self is how I got into all this state of discomfort in the first place. Like others I observe in ward and rehab. Discomfort is a useful word picked up from my doctor. He doesn’t say pain or agony or Sturm und Drang. What we are talking about is discomfort, which is an aspirin word all of its own, the promise of comfort being not far away. Dispense with discomfort and comfort is the norm but even then only I know how I feel. Daily someone is after the simple answer to when will I be better and I am equally pleasant in replying along the lines that it would be better but it could be worse. Support terms like dull ache and lack of concentration give them the sense they need to hear. Much of the time I don’t know how precisely I feel, though an aspirin helps. Yet I go through the alpine chart of pain highs and comfort valleys one more time, in hope that I might actually locate just how I feel. The minotaur of a monitor registers the threads that tell us I am probably okay. They seem like a way out of this labyrinth of personal health statistics. Helpful people work to get me better, the same people whose objective is to get me to where I say I feel fine. Their work is incalculable. They have gadgets they attach to me, medications to feed me, needles and syrups, repetitive questions they repeat to me, all aimed at telling them how I must be feeling, keeping in mind their objective interest is somewhere the other side of discomfort. They are not alone. Even if I feel like shit or tell them it hurts here, here, and here, they earnestly make notes, dispense more pills, assuring me time is on my side. I have no argument with them at all, or time for that matter. I am infinitely grateful for all of their ministrations, the nurse who reads the room in a heartbeat, the doctor who recites symptoms like astronomers name stars, the physio who times my tolerance to a nicety. They all want what’s best for me but only I know how I feel. Miniscule pills and magnificent pillows are my days and nights, away or back home. Six weeks and we’ll see how you are. Others say, eight weeks. Some say nothing and want the report. Reports that say I look pretty good or I will be out of here in a week or it’s take it easy and look after yourself and they will know more after the blood test, Thursday. Someone wants to know about back to work while another says don’t even worry about that, while I’m going at one mile per hour and this course of medication will lessen over time starting with the morphine but as someone says in passing only ultimately no one but you knows how you really feel.