You know how the storms come up,
and the winds come up,
and the rains come on –
sometimes even sideways?

Today is like that.
Not outside –
inside –
deep inside –
in my freakin' mind.

I am not overly enamored of today.
Not really in love with tomorrow,
either.
Tomorrow I go to see my doc
at the VA clinic.
That will be a real hoot.

I can already feel the pain now.
My right leg hates me.
Shin, knee, hip,
sometimes even the ankle.
They all hate me.

Stuff my doc Rx'd for me
for the pain
doesn't do a damn thing,
so I went back to Naproxen,
1000 mg at a time,
and I know that I'm taking too many,
but you sorta do that
when you are trying to beat the damn pain.

Read about that –
you get to where your pain meds
just don't,
so you double up,
then, instead of every 8 or 6 or 4 hours,
you start taking them
every 4 or 3 or 2 hours.

And by then you have taken so much of it
that you don't get loopy,
you don't get sick,
and it stil doesn't do much to kill the pain.
So you start to embellish it a bit
with fermented grains such as
sorghum, corn, rice, rye or wheat,
or potatoes, fruits or even just sugar.
Vodka.
And you CAN smell it on your breath.
Drink enough of it,
and you reek of it..
You ain't foolin' no one but yourself.

So tomorrow I am making myself available
to the Inquisitor in the white lab coat,
who is really a very nice guy,
and I trust him completely,
and I know when he learns of my self-medicating
that I will be disappointing him.
He's the kind of guy you don't want to disappoint.
But I'm going to, I guess.

All this time with my legs
I thought it was age –
bad hinges and things.
Thought it was my hips,
my knees....
Nope!
Fell down a coupe-few times
and each time I landed on the top of my shins,
just below the knee caps.
The right one is the baddy.
The right one hates me the most.
Bad enough that the rest of me is off in the corner,
mumbling things and casting angry looks at me,
and then the right shin kicks in again –
not really, but it sure feels like it –
and reminds me that I'm not 19 anymore.

Lots of time I go to bed and lay there,
waiting forever for sleep,
and I think that if I don't wake up again
that it would be all right.
It wouldn't be, really,
but the pain wouldn't bother me any more –
hell, nothing would bother me any more! –
But there is really so much that I still want to do,
and if I could only get around the damn pain,
I actually think that I could do some of it.

I'd sure like to feel good enough so I could try.

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