Tag Archives for body

I Have No Ass

This may be the vainest thing I have or will ever write. I have no ass. I just discovered this while trying to find an outfit to wear to a family dinner later today. Since becoming ill my weight has fluctuated quite a bit. I’m a small woman to begin with – average height and slim athletic build – so losing weight is not something that I ever strived toward achieving. My weight has held steady all these years to what I weighed toward the end of high school and at university. I’ve always been active and never gone on a diet, but I’m always mindful that I can lose weight with a bad bout of the flu or extreme stress, so I’ve always tried to eat well. I’m also hypoglycemic, which adds another layer of concern about always keeping my body fueled.

Last year a friend I’ve known since university came to visit me while he was in town for a few days. He told me some months later that after he left my home he cried. He cried because of how thin I was from my illness. He said the shock of seeing me so thin and sickly overwhelmed him, and his emotions overcame him. It surprised me when he told me that and it frightened me a bit too. Surprised because in all the years I’ve known him he never once before told me of any situation that made him cry; and frightened because I obviously wasn’t seeing what everyone else was. I knew I’d lost weight because my clothes, especially my pants and jeans, didn’t fit well and I was always pulling them up, but I didn’t’ think I looked so thin it could evoke that kind of reaction from someone.

Now I’m not as thin as I was last year, but as I try to find something to wear, sorting through my clothes to find clothing other than jeans, sweat pants or shorts, it’s upsetting that I can’t find anything that doesn’t make me look like a pole. I’ve lost the shapeliness of my body. I no longer look fit and athletic. Realistically, I probably haven’t looked that way for a long time. The fact is, because of my pain I’ve been more concerned with comfort than looking attractive when I dress over the last couple of years, so noticing how my body looks as I try to find clothes that fit well today is a bit of a shock.

My body has changed so much and it happened right in front of my eyes without me noticing.

 

Thomas Rhett – South Side

My Legs Are On Fire

Intellectually I understand the definition of referred pain – pain felt at a site different from that of an injured or diseased organ or body part – and how “it is due to the fact that nerve signals from several areas of the body may “feed” the same nerve pathway leading to the spinal cord and brain.” I also understand how it’s physiologically possible for pain signals to get altered as they travel along the nervous system to the brain and result in horrendous pain in a body.

Pain and How You Sense It

Pain and How You Sense It

But, after all this time I still can’t make sense of how it’s possible for something in my lower abdomen to cause me to feel so much pain in my legs, back – and since my unsuccessful procedure in February – by right butt cheek. Since waking up this morning my legs are on fire and my back hurts from my lower spine to my neck. I can’t find a comfortable sitting position. I’m walking like someone whose body is significantly aged and has experienced decades of brutal punishment. While every nerve in my body is on high alert waiting for what might come next.

I feel such burning pain that I imagine it would be easy to set another person on fire with the slightest touch from my skin. Today is not a rare day. This is the kind of pain that I am now accustomed to feeling. Whether it starts early at the break of morning, in the middle of a brightly lit afternoon, or as evening winds into the darkness of night, my pain cannot be separated from my body. All the same, the intellectual logic of knowing why this is happening cannot blend with the desperate, emotional child trying to jump out of my body and run as far away as possible from all this pain.

A Flock Of Seagulls – I Ran