Pain Relief

"We begin to realize that it will take something 

more powerful than we are

to relieve our suffering."

-- Marta Mrotek, 

Miracle in Progress: A Handbook for Holistic Recovery

Wet noodle 7-19-14

" ... that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, 

who understands what hurts you."

-- Lysley Tenorio, Monstress

"So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief;

Verily, with every difficulty there is relief."

--The Quran

For the most part I try to rely on acupuncture and massage therapy to iron out and relax my sore muscles. 

But every once in a while I need pharmaceutical intervention.

I had a pretty painful and stubborn shoulder spasm happening after my bike ride a couple of days ago.

It was night time, so acupuncture and massage weren't options.

I tried to massage it myself, but I couldn't reach it.

I rolled around on the floor with a baseball under my shoulder blade, and tried to work it out that way.

It hurt. And it didn't work either.

The pain had already disrupted one night's sleep, and I wasn't interested in it happening again.

So at bedtime I took a muscle relaxer.

My stiff, sore, rigid spasm-y muscle (and the whole rest of me) gave up its hold and I relaxed like a limp wet noodle. I slept hard and solid, all night, and woke up more rested and refreshed than I have in a long time. 

In the morning, my shoulder felt a lot better -- a little sore, but the spasm had finally un-clenched and released its grip.

Aaaah.

To celebrate --

Ding! Ding! Ding!

-- here's a "One Good Thing/One Bad Joke" special bonus:

Q: What do you call a fake noodle?

A: An impasta.

Get it?

Good.

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.