Okay, Maybe a Four

Holding my head in the appropriate position, not too much facing the left, you see, or the pain...it radiates up my head and down my arm. And my freakin' God...how it hurts.

When I worked at the hospital, a kind nurse would come into a patient room occasionally and ask the patient, "How do you rate your pain?" And then he or she would show the patient a little laminated card which had teeny people faces...a smiley face for "0" and a grimmacing face with tears for "10." And the patient would mumble or scream an answer and that was how they knew how much of the good drugs to give. Today as I was driving from house to house to visit patients (my God, I had no business driving as I could SO not look left and was relying on my peripheral vision prayer ["Please, God, don't let me miss seeing a car in my blind spots as I am out here doing Your will and am a good person and I looked as far as my neck could reach...]) I was repeating to myself, "It's not a 10, it's not a 10...keep driving...these people are dying...your neck is NOTHING...it's a negative number compared to them...carry on...it's not a 10."

The neck is an old car accident whiplash injury (or at least that's what the osteopathic doctor who I went to in seminary told me)...a stupid, minor nothing car injury which we (i.e. the passengers of all three cars involved) were all very lucky to walk away from (including the stupid-assed drunk driver who created the chaos in the first place by running a red light). But, occasionally it rears its ugly head and I find myself cringing.

I've tried to pacify it with a glass of wine (and a few baked doritos, 'cause they're manna from heaven). And before bed I'll bring out the big guns and take one of my nifty muscle relaxants prescribed for exactly this type of reoccurence.

The other day my mother asked me, in essence, if perhaps blogging wasn't just a narcissistic call for attention (she didn't mean it about me, as my mom is a good and kind mommy, she was asking it hypothetically about the internet generation), and so perhaps this is my narcicsstic moment. My neck hurts. Ouch.