Palliativity 103: Phantom Pain

REsolve

I hear this word for the first time and my body goes cold. Long months of recovery, rehab and healing have brought me here; to the medical chopping block. I am 15 years old, t+2years since my surgery, and host to a chronic pain more powerful than the slice of a scalpel…

I am sitting in my neuro-doctor’s office seeking to find my way to the path of ever-elusive progress. Every exercise, every minute my testosterone filled body gets stronger, the pain gets worse. At the time, I still looked to the labcoats for hope and answers:

“Phantom Pain” was the offered diagnosis, “There is nothing more we can do for you —”.

Terminal suffering; there is no path.

Doc, are you telling me that a ghostly apparition of a body bound poltergeist haunts my nerves and tendons? This is science? Don’t you offer exorcisms?

I learn in that moment that it is I who must take pilot’s seat and steer this burning wreckage toward a better land on the far-side of self-distruction and the impulse to end it all.

We are all victims of our biology. Through the tears I find a tiny glimmer of strength and resolve, like the lone-star hovering in the red-glow-black of a city night’s sky. Fuck physics and Fuck physicians; I am the ocean, the sky and the stars. I pull back on the yolk and ram forward the throttle with a roaring tail made of fire.

This is my life and I’ve got places to be —

“What doesn’t kill you, defines you” *

0+>

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*The Zero Effect