Ice

"I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass."

-- David Lee Roth

Vintage ice trailer 5-10-14

"Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish

one sensation, fire, from the other, frost."

-- A.S. Byatt, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice

I ice my feet a few times a day, every day. In fact, I go to bed every night with cold packs on my feet.

Sometimes I ice my ass.

Sometimes I ice my legs.

Sometimes I submerge my whole lower body in an ice bath.

Sometimes I even ice my eyes. Yes, my eyes. When they are all itchy, red and inflamed from allergies, an ice pack is the only thing that shuts off the histamine reaction and calms the irritation and swelling.

The pull-out drawer in our freezer is filled with frozen ice packs of varying sizes, shapes and uses, so there are always plenty to have in rotation. When one gets warm and melty, I can just switch it out for a freshly frozen ice-cold one. And they all get used. All the time.

It may sound unpleasant, and for someone who doesn't particularly enjoy cold it definitely can be, especially at first. (I once gave myself frostbite, actual for-real second-degree frostbite that peeled and everything, from falling asleep with ice packs applied directly to my sore heels. It was painful afterwards, but while it was happening, my feet were blissfully numb and I was asleep, so I never even felt it.) 

Lesson learned.

But used correctly, applying ice to what hurts can be an incredibly effective pain reliever. It even has a smart-sounding science-y name, cryotherapy, which means "cold cure." 

For me, applying ice where it hurts is like hitting the off switch, or the reset button. 

And when it comes to pain, off is the best possible thing.