Sunday, January 15, 2017

50 Shades of Pain

My mother once told me that the Inuit have 50 words for snow, each describing subtle defining characteristics of various states of snow.  I need at least twice that many words for the amazing variety of pain I experience on a daily (and nightly) basis.

To be sure twinge, ache, throb, sting, burn, and tingle are all lovely words.  I am intimately acquainted with each of them.  I invoke them daily.  However, I need terms that convey far more complex sensations than any of those found in your typical thesaurus.  I've never been very clever when it comes to inventions, so perhaps my kind readers can help me come up with new words that capture the following experiences:

1) Elephants wearing crampons are river dancing on the superior surface of my tibia.

2) Fire-breathing termites are eating the flesh from behind my knee-cap.  They pee sulfuric acid.

3) Someone smacked my knee with a cactus paddle dipped in Ghost chili extract.

4)  Try-outs for the worlds tiniest Bruce Lee look-alike are being held deep within my bone marrow.

5) The feeling you get when your calf muscle suddenly turns inside-out.

6) X-wing pilots and tie fighters are suddenly cooperating and firing lasers at my meniscus.

7) That thing from alien has latched onto my knee and is injecting an embryo behind my patella.

Fortunately, these sensations are as short-lived as they are intense and sudden - which is to say that I might be gurgling away happily one moment then spewing a non-ending eruption of nonsensical expletives, even though outwardly, nothing has changed.  It's actually rather extraordinary, to experience such spontaneous generation of sensation

 Perhaps Spanish is a more efficient than English*, but as far as I can recall, there is only one word for pain in Spanish.   And I clearly remember how I learned it.  When Kevin was being processed through the nightmarish wards of the public hospital in Mexico, every single staff member asked him "?Tiene Dolor?"  I don't know why they bothered to ask if he had pain, when they absolutely no intention nor ability to do anything about it.  I guess they are just a curious people and a crying man with limbs jutting in inappropriate directions presented a mystery that required further investigation.


*Of course, it is also possible that I am mostly ignorant of advanced Spanish vocabulary and I couldn't be arsed to look up dolor in a Spanish Thesaurus - which I only assume exists...

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