Chasing the Pain

They call this - what I am doing now- "Chasing the Pain," which makes the process sound both like a child's game and hopeless, in a dog-chasing-tail sort-of-way, which is, they tell me, accurate. One must not ever chase the pain in the case of back injuries, because you will not catch up, or you will over-medicate or you will hurt yourself by being under-medicated. I nod. I understand. But I don't. Because I don't want to be medicated all the time- either hazing in and out or feeling sick or gobbling up my stomach lining. Nobody does.  So we game it - we ever-expanding pool of back-hobbled folk. And, on very naughty days, we boast.

Take me, for example. "Drug Free!" I trumped to my mother. (She was proud. We'd had Oxycodon and Morphine and 2 weeks on a sofa. This. Was. Big News!). "Badly dressed!" I whined to Deb. "Stocking alarm!"

All of this on the commute to work. Deb has a solution. Get the white-as siding-on-a-house-stockings off. Go to a drug store before you get to work. Buy sheer stockings. Two choices: black or nude. Either is better than white tights. Do it! You'll feel so much better about going to work in a black dress with black shoes.  "I look like a Mondrian," I say.
"Send a picture" she says.
I will not. This moment needn't be memorialized.

But she's right. I know she's right. So I go to the drug store in the basement of my office building. I buy three (3) pairs of pantyhose, mostly because I can't really actually read what they say - size? color? one is sure to work.  I walk over to the public washroom and choose the large stall at the end, against conscience, but one does require additional room to put on tights, you know.

So there I am. One foot in a shoe, in pantyhose. The other dangling mid-air, in a sort-of hunched over standing tree pose. The toe isn't right. It's not covering my toes. I try to shift the nylon. I twist. I lean. I think - this is a bad idea. But not in time.  I hear an odd popping sound in my back. And I lie on the floor of the bathroom.

This is the only measure of pain I have. I can't remember it exactly. "If humans could remember pain, no one would ever have more than one child" my mother told me - (child #5) - sweetly - when I was a child).  I did not look to see if there was gum on the floor, or urine or a used needle, any one of which was a distinct possibility.  I pulled on my pantyhose with my back on the floor by the toilet, then walked back to the drugstore thinking "do not chase the pain" and bought Robax, a recent friend, who has proved to be as solid a companion as everyone said it would be.

"I was here just a minute ago," I told the clerk.
She smiled.
'I bought pantyhose." I said.
"mmmhmmm"
"There should be a warning on those because you know what I did, I went to that bathroom over there..."
The line was growing behind me. People on the way to work buying orange juice and granola bars for breakfast.  Who does that? Who buys breakfast at the drug store?
"Should be a sign, don't you think?" I am being jocular now, making up for my hunched over form, making light and cheerful. "...more dangerous than smoking while you're pregnant..."
She asks if I have a frequent buyers card, and I slide it over. We've been through this moments ago, before I was a pain chaser, back when I was a customer off drugs, and I am well prepared.
"I'm sorry," she says. "That's terrible"
She means it, I know. And I'll catch up. I will.
"Thanks!" I say, all smiley grimace, all warped and chasing and set back and human.