From here to eventually

I looked in the mirror today and all I saw was a junkie.

On Monday of this week, our giant pup Jake attempted to remove my arm from its shoulder mountings during a walk around the block. Shortly thereafter, my right shoulder began to feel twitchy. That night, about 1 a.m., Jake wouldn’t come back in the house after being let out to pee, requiring me to drag him bodily back inside.

By Tuesday morning, I was done, man. I had a knot the size of a golfball on my shoulder and my whole arm ached like hell. Fiery hell. Like 5+ on a scale of 1-10. It hurt most when I was banging away on my guitar or at my keyboard, so consequently, I didn’t get much of either done this week, outside of my work compulsories. An entire week, shot to hell.

But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself.

By Wednesday, I concluded that this beauty wasn’t going to go away on its own, so I went to an urgent care center in town, since we don’t have a local sawbones yet. The doctor declared my shoulder tweaked and my nerves pinched and threw some muscle relaxers my way. And this is where my troubles really began.

Thursday I muddled through the day in hazy pain, but had the sense to book a massage for the next day. Friday morning I had a healthy breakfast of Soma, Naproxin and Zantac and went for a 9 a.m. workout. And work me out she did. 90 minutes, most of which was spent on my shoulders, neck and right arm. At one point she had me on my stomach, my affected arm twisted up behind me as far as it would go and she commented about how well I was bearing up under the grueling ordeal I was enduring. I croaked out something about being a Recovering Catholic; I figured I was just being punished for something.

Turned out she was a Recovering Catholic too. We talked about second-hand guilt and original sin and she continued to work me over. I came home bruised and battered but hopeful, and again took my medication as prescribed and melted away in front of the TV.

Saturday morning comes around, and by now the narcotics have had time to work their cumulative way with me. I woke up so groggy and gross-feeling that I took a couple of Excedrin—fortified with caffeine—and the uppers of the Excedrin and the downers of three days’ worth of muscle relaxers staged an epic battle, using my body as their field of valor. We got back from Target and the grocery store and I felt like I was going to hurl. My body wanted one thing all morning: to not be conscious. And when I couldn’t give it that, it gave it to me.

And the whole time, I’m thinking, “Johnny Cash lived with chronic pain the last several decades of his life. Every day, every night. While he was performing, while he was giving interviews, while he was eating country ham and biscuits with gravy for breakfast.” And Cash was prone to addiction, just like my boy’s daddy.

And I realized that he must have had to decide every day, how much pain am I going to endure vs how badly do I want to tempt fate again. And he didn’t make the right call every time, just like I didn’t. But he never gave in and he never gave up the fight.

I reckon a person could do worse for a role model. Shit, I’m only dealing with a limited course of chronic pain. I’ve had these fucking pinched nerves before, and eventually the bastards work themselves out. It’s just getting from here to eventually that’s gonna be a bitch, not the rest of my life.

So I’m de-prescribing myself the goofballs. I still have a bunch of them, but they’re gonna sit on the shelf in case of the next emergency. There’s very little likelihood, after this week’s reminder that I am still a fucking junkie, that I’ll decide to take ‘em out for a spin recreationally any time soon.

The massage seems to have helped, but not cured my deal. Even if it hadn’t done anything, I’d be jumping off the goofballs. If I still ache like hell Monday I’ll go back to urgent care and get a referral to a physical therapist. If you know me, you know I’d almost rather suffer the tortures of the damned than exercise, but having tried massage and ruled out further narcotics, I don’t see any alternative to further punishing myself.

Because that always gets me from here to eventually.