[Magdalen] Pseudo-epiphany, & The latest.

[Sally Davies]

Mike - so sorry - praying that you will, against all likelihood, get some
rest.

In the absence of chemical relief, or adjunctive to medication, it may be
helpful to try some visualisations. One that I have used with (some)
success with burns patients, is to visualise/imagine extreme cold, like
standing in snow or in an ice cold river. River is a good image because you
can create a rich surrounding of sights, sounds, and smells as well as
tactile feelings. Imagine your lower legs getting gradually colder and
colder until you can't feel your toes, then your feet, then your legs, and
allow that numbness to continue as long as possible.

Another trick is to "move the pain around". Go into it (which means not
fighting those nerve endings but listening to them). and then see if you
can, with your mind, effect a change - any change. Get it to shift around
or picture it as a current swirling in water, or a fire that has hot spots
that come and go. This visualisation does not affect the pain itself but it
does to some extent address the "suffering" component of pain which is the
emotional response to it and the feeling of not having any control over it.

There may be a therapist near you who practices clinical hypnosis, and a
referral to that might be of great help. I think you would be a good
hypnosis partner because you're sensitive and imaginative by nature.

And these days, it is or should be a partnership - the whole understanding
of clinical hypnosis has shifted from the early days when people were seen
as "subjects". If anyone wants to call you that or treat you that way,
scream and run/hobble away :-)

Sally D


On Thursday, January 7, 2016, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Not in at all the best mood tonight, but I thought I'd take my mind off
> the pain a bit by posting.
>
> 13 years ago tonight, I walked away from my marriage of 14 years.  Happy
> Epiphany, I thought.
>
> And tomorrow, I'm going to call my wound Doc and request a prescription
> pain killer.  Now I'm back to work, -- remember I was off between Christmas
> Eve and this past Sunday --, I'm throbbing and listening to nerve endings
> currently with nowhere to go sing their song of woe on a constant basis.
> As much as I don't want to, I need something like what they gave Everett
> back when his freshly broken leg was dancing a jig on his synapses.  I
> think his was Vicodin; I don't care what they give me, but it must come
> from behind a pharmacist's counter, hands down.
>
> I have an appt next Tues at Stanford.  How TV and classic literature are
> keeping me reasonably sane is currently beyond me.
>