I have taken a brief hiatus from this blog to reconsider how I use it. I wasn’t enjoying trying to find a strict schedule: my thoughts refused to be marshalled that way, and I was left feeling uninspired. Then this particular passage came to me as a distraction: you’ll soon see why. Since then I have begun to think that it might be a good idea to let my creativity be guided by the eddies of life, and to allow my academic musings to be peppered with this sort of vignette. In any case, I enjoyed writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it.
TW: pain, medication
***
At 3 o’clock I woke up from a dream about Harry Potter and realised I was in agony.
I flexed my arms in alarm. What on earth? An excruciating fire was focused in my wrists, and reached tendrils up to my shoulders. It was the sort of invasive pain that could only have crept up and spread slowly, but in retrospect I couldn’t imagine how I had slept through even a fraction of it. It was incredible that it hadn’t entered my dreams, hadn’t impinged upon my consciousness until some (unreasonably high) threshold had jolted me awake.
I sought to think straight and found myself asking, like a medic: “Where would I place this pain on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain I could possibly imagine?” My answer came back quite clearly, and now I think rather conservatively: a 7. I knew I had experienced worse pain: I particularly recalled being trained to use pepper-spray. But on that occasion at least I had been prepared and able to brace myself. This pain had assaulted me while I slept.
And what was the cause of such an extreme sensation? I held my arms up to my face. The moonlight revealed perfectly healthy-looking limbs. I dropped them again. The only conceivable explanation presented itself: earlier in the day I had recklessly indulged in some DIY – sanding and chiselling a wooden banister post. The result had been what I generously dubbed a “shabby chic” effect. It seemed that in protest at either my lack of artistry or such unparalleled exertion, my arms had gone on strike.
I wondered what I should do with myself. True, I had never experienced such muscle pain before. But much as I felt deserving of attentive medical treatment, I reasoned that I couldn’t truly have done myself that much of a mischief. I heaved myself up and tottered to the bathroom, causing my husband to stir. Scrabbling around in the cupboard, I found some paracetamol, and returned to the bedroom to gulp down a couple of tablets. I’ve never been very good at taking tablets, and these were hefty beasts by my standards, but I was so desperate that they went down with a rare ease. Then I looked down at the packaging clutched in my hand, and spotted ‘EXP 06/17’.
I stared at the offensive inscription, a few moments passing while I sought to understand it. I confirmed that this wasn’t some peculiar date format: it did indeed represent June 2017. How on earth did we possess paracetamol that pre-dated our marriage? How had it moved house with us twice? How had it wriggled its way to the front of the bathroom cabinet? What was it going to do to me four long years after its expiry?
I groaned, in pain and exasperation and annoyance at myself. I wasn’t really worried that the antique paracetamol was going to harm me. I remembered my pharmacologist father explaining that the expiry date is there just because the drug becomes less effective over time, not because it goes off. But I knew that I couldn’t now just take some nice, fresh, reliable paracetamol – I had had my allotted dose. We were out of ibuprofen. And the pain was getting worse.
I wondered whether warmth might help. I rolled onto my front and tucked my arms underneath me. But the awkward position and the weight of my body exacerbated the pain. I rolled back over, picked up my phone and consulted Dr Internet – who recommended cold instead. I remembered that when I was 13 and had a swollen knee I had been told to put a bag of frozen peas around it. This wasn’t an option now – we only had an open bag of mixed frozen vegetables (the mixture, of course, bound to ruin the effectiveness of the method). So I shuffled off to the bathroom once more and filled the sink with cold water.
I’m not that good with the cold. My husband swims in the bitter British sea all year round, whereas I can barely paddle in the summer because my feet can’t take the chill. So I did not enjoy plunging my arms into that icy sink. I whimpered and looked pathetically into my own unhappy face reflected in the mirror above. My eyes were red and my pupils tiny, still unaccustomed to the light. My double and I silently commiserated with one another.
But something was changing. As the cold crept through my arms, it seemed to replace the pain. I have noticed the distracting properties of cold before – when I feel sick I sometimes lean against a cold surface or stand at an open window, and focus on the chill until the nausea abates. As I hunched shivering over the sink, I was grateful to take this sharp sensation over the other, particularly as it subsided to numbness.
After three long dunks in the water, I went back to bed. I lay on my back and crossed my arms over my chest, corpse-like. The damp coolness of my arms felt strange against the warm and dry skin of my body. I begged the pain to stay away, but soon the cold numbness began to be replaced by a throbbing – a fiery pulse returning to my hands, with particular intensity in the thumbnail that earlier that day I had bitten too low.
Thrub thrub. Thrub thrub. Thrub thrub.
With the cold and the returning pain, I don’t know how it happened. I can only think that I was hypnotised by the deep drum of my own heart, amplified by my thawing arms. But somehow, I fell asleep.
***
Please do not be concerned for me. In the morning I was bizarrely fine, and couldn’t account for the pain of the night. Only one ill-effect remains: I am hesitant about doing more DIY.
Cryptic Meg 