Thursday, 08 November, 2001 20:38
As a human bean, I understand the concept of pain. Essentially, if you do something that causes you pain, you are motivated to stop doing that, whatever it is. What I don't understand is continuing pain. There are many things that cause us pain that don't have a direct cause, or if they do, removing the cause doesn't necessarily make that pain go away. Well, I guess that I shouldn't say that I don't understand it... I just don't like it. And yes, the subject came up for a reason... I am right now in a bunch of pain. But I know that it's the kind of thing that will go away in a matter of days, I hope. But the chronic pain, the pain that doesn't go away... the only thing that I can think of is that it just doesn't matter if we hurt or not. The universe is unfeeling. Infinitely unfeeling. You might even say coldly unfeeling. This unfeelingness has a lot to do with my disbelief of any supreme beings, and especially the worship thereof. Well, that's just one of the reasons. Someday I will enumerate them, but not today. Anyway, last night before I went to bed, I had one of the coughing/sneezing spells that I used to do a lot before I quit smoking. I'd had a little cough for a coupla days, but I hadn't thought much of it. I had forgotten how painful these fits were... But I got over it and went to bed and coughed all night long. When I finally got up, I was coughing so hard that I was vomiting... but I wasn't getting anything out of my lungs. So I called in sick and tried to go back to sleep, but when I lay down the coughing gets worse, of course. I finally called in to the doc and got some antibiotics... had I mentioned the green snot? anyway, the antibiotics will cure the sinusitis and hopefully the bronchitis. My throat is also on fire, partly from the regurgitation of stomach acids and partly from the infected post-nasal drip. But my main problem right now is pain... my side hurts so much that I can't cough effectively, and an ineffective cough is... well, not very effective. I need to get that crap out of my lungs, and without coughing that's impossible. I've actually x-rayed people who have broken a rib while coughing, although I don't think this one is quite that bad. Nevertheless, I'm gonna try to go in to work tomorrow... I lost two days last week, and already one this week, and I don't want to spend all of my vacation being sick... So I'm hoping that I can sleep tonight. I've also got an 08:00 appointment in the morning with the gal from the finance company, I hope that I can make that... I think that I'll just drop off the papers, though, and not expose her to my germs. In fact, I should stay home tomorrow for the same reason... I'm pretty sure that my co-workers and patients would appreciate it. O'well, I'll decide in the morning...