How fortunate I am

The other day I injured my foot, ripping the nail clean off one of my toes. It didn’t really hurt at all at the time — gotta love those endorphins — but that night, in the wee hours of the morning, the pain woke me up. If my toe had had a mouth it would have been screaming.

I limped into the bathroom and took an aspirin, then returned to bed, but my foot hurt too badly for me to just go back to sleep. I went into the kitchen and got a bag of frozen French fries out of the freezer, then sat down on the living room couch and put the bag on top of my foot. And sat there, waiting for my foot to get numb, waiting for the pill to kick in, clenching my teeth to keep from crying out. I was in serious pain, I’m telling you.

Then it occurred to me: I endured pain like that for fifteen months. FIFTEEN MONTHS, walking around all day feeling like that all the bloody time. And now, experiencing that level of misery again, I couldn’t understand how I made it through.

Eventually, of course, the aspirin started working and I put the French fries back and returned to bed. But this incident reminds me yet again how wonderful it is that the Great Headache Crisis is over, and how awesome the Cleveland Clinic is. I love you guys!