Pain In The Ass Doesn’t Have To Be In The Ass

It has been a funny month, if not lousy. And here’s why.

It May Be In Your Legs
After several weeks of absence, I began jogging again. I noticed there was pain in both my legs. I ignored them thinking my legs forgot how to jog and they would adapt later. After some jogging sessions later, I noticed something funny about the pain. Jogging pain usually comes after a period of rest, say an hour of sleep, instead this one hit me right at the first time I stomped my leg on the ground. Even then, I still thought something funny going on with my leg. Now it’s not so funny anymore. The pain doesn’t go away and now it even hurts to walk –that, I believe it is not a good thing.

I made a plan to see a doctor, but before I could even do that, I had an emergency trip to Bali. I reluctantly asked my legs to bear some degree of pain for some time since I didn’t know when I would be back. The leg thing was only the beginning. In Bali something more hilarious happened.


It May Be In Your Finger
In Bali, I stayed in a very decent hotel. It was a good morning, I wake up with a good mood, and was ready to let go my good sleeping mood. I stretched my neck, hands, and legs, and accident happened right then at 8 am Bali time.

Apparently there was a sharp five-millimeter-wide-and-seven-millimeter-long wood piece sticking out of the bed head, and out of one-against-ten-million chances, it chose to stab one of my right finger –right there between the nail and the soft flesh, right then at my good morning body stretch.

The flesh and the nail quickly squeezed the wound in. I knew they meant well –to have the wound covered promptly— but they seemed to be absent-minded about one minor detail: the wood piece was still inside. It was closing so fast and tight there wasn't even a drop of blood coming out. I tried to do justice between handling the pain and pinning out the wood, two attempts of which I failed.

There were two friends in the room whom I could ask for help. Friend Number One failed to even see the wound with her ‘maturing’ eyes and Friend Number Two was still asleep. Although I knew that it would be nowhere wise to ask such help from a person barely conscious, I did anyway because my pain insisted otherwise. His shocked and disgust reaction toward the appearance of my finger assured me to cross him out of my help-list. However, I still apologized for ever giving him a bad morning sight.

Wisely, Friend Number One called emergency and had someone over. The hotel sent a room service staff. “What the hell did they send a room service for? Clean up my blood stain from the bed sheet? There were NO drop of blood!” The second he gazed at my finger he gave a facial reaction exactly the same as Friend Number Two. I forgot about blowing up, I laughed –just a little. With his eyes avoiding not just my finger but the entire me, he advised me to go to clinic for help. And went I did, and out of grace, my two friends came along.

The clinic staff could not help, and I loved her reason –-her ‘maturing’ eyes could not see the wound. So she called a doctor and let me talked to him. I told him the situation and that I think my nail had to be removed. The doctor on-duty asked, “Sir, I have the medicine and tools required, and I need half hour to get there. I know it’s painful, but can you hang on?” Funny he should ask because except I have a device to beam him up to my room, I didn’t have any choice, but his sympathy for my pain made me patiently answered, “Of course, Doc.”

We had our breakfast while waiting for the good doctor. My two friends constantly put on worry faces when what I actually needed was for them to crack some hilarious jokes as they usually do to distract me from the pain. They said they couldn’t think of one. I kept lying and said I was okay, but my face didn’t exactly cooperate. If I were Pinocchio, my nose would grow so long I could reach a tea cup from the table across. After a short breakfast, we went up to our room and continue waiting. I could feel the pain moving up my finger with every minutes that passed by

When the doctor took a look at my finger, he agreed that the nail had to be removed. While having a friendly chat, he gave me four anesthetic shots, two of which right at the end of my finger –the ground zero of the pain. He assured me it was okay because after a while the two previous shots would have already numbed my finger. He may be right, but apparently we didn’t wait long enough, so the next two shots were dead pain. I said to the Doc, “Oh, what the hell. Keep it going” and continue screaming.

It was time for the main attraction: the nail extraction[1]. He made sure my finger was numb enough. This time we waited for an appropriate duration. There was a funny sight of him attempting to extract my nail, because it seemed to put a decent fight to stand its ground. After that, he removed the wood piece. Good thing I didn’t feel a thing. Afterward, he bandaged my finger, reminded me to have it replace in several days, and gave two sets of pills: an antibiotic and a painkiller. He said I would need them when the shots stop kicking. Boy, he was right.

Forward three days later, I went to a hospital to have the bandage removed. A macho male nurse, who probably thinks every male species on this earth is as strong as he is, swiftly took it off without any painkiller, mercy, nor at least a warning. The bandage was already stuck to the wound on the nerve-ending that had not healed enough. I reacted accordingly the nerve-ending’s name: pain nerve –I screamed the hell out my lung. It was a pain ten fold than when there was a wood piece stuck and the nail removed combined. And it was a long pain. I knew there was a magnificently good reason why that soft part of our fingers is protected by a skin modified so hard to what we call as nails, and this nurse seemed to forget it.

He told me, nicely, to come back in three days to have the bandage replaced again. He’s got to be kidding. I was sure he meant, “Please come by later and let me hurt you again.” And the story keeps getting better and better.


It May Be In Your Eyes
By the time I was about to remove the second bandage, it was my right eye’s turn to do something funny. It was red –the kind of red which people turned their faces away when seeing it. First my leg, then my finger, now my eye. It had been expelling almost a bucket of liquid for almost three days, and hurt to just open it. From a bandage-removal appointment with a nurse, I continue with quick appointment with an optician.

There was a good news and a bad news. The good news is that it was not caused by virus so it was not contagious. The bad news is it was something that had been there for quite a while. He said that most of the blood vessels in my right eye were swollen, but I was lucky that the ones in my cornea are safe.

I’m an illustrator and human vision is an interesting subject for me. I know principally how our eyes mechanically work, I read about it, marvel at it, and even teach the damn subject in my class. I know what the doctor saying is bad, but I need to confirm it to a term I understand most, “And that’s bad, Doc?”. He said, “That is quite bad considering it has been some time.” I pretty much understood that sentence. He prescribed me one eye-drop to use every two hours for several days until I empty the bottle, two sets of four-times-a-day pills. Four pills a day for eye problem must mean a big deal.

I remember an optician I went to see six months ago. I confessed to her that I have skipped using my eye glasses since high school. After examining my eyes, she made a good guess that I work constantly face-to-face to a monitor. After nodding to her guess, I got a harsh 20 minutes of warning speech of how what I do is dangerous. She told me to get back to my glasses.

Having seen an overdue second opinion, I realized that the first doctor wasn’t kidding. Now I have two doctors ordering me to lay off monitor for a while. If for some reason I have to, do it no more than one hour, rest my eyes for an hour at least before head-to-head with my computer again. Imagine how long that took me to finish this writing.


Now I’m an illustrator who can’t use my finger for a while and a computer freak who has limited of visual access, also for a while. I promise to take my legs seriously before I turn to a routine jogger who can’t even walk without a sting of pain on them.

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[1] It’s a term I learned from the bill he wrote me.