Leaning into a Pricker Bush

I was asked to describe shingles pain. Is it worse than childbirth? Hmmm….

The comparison is off. It’s not comparing apples to apples. It’s comparing apples to pricker bushes.

One is ultimately good — who doesn’t like a delicious apple?

The other is annoying. All those scratches from a pricker bush semi-hurt, semi-itch, totally-annoy.

The worst physical pain I ever experienced was not childbirth. It was a gall-bladder attack.

Childbirth is a means to an end. I guess it was painful? The truth is that I look back and don’t remember the pain at all. I remember holding that new little person for the first time and studying his or her face.

Shingles is annoying pain. It’s fairly constant. It’s unreachable as far as relief. It’s exhausting.

Several months ago, I had a woman come in my office, ostensibly about getting a membership to the gym or something, but she started weeping. Her husband was rapidly descending into dementia. She couldn’t leave him home alone. She couldn’t leave him with someone else. She was his everything — and he needed so much from her.

Now there’s a pain that’s worse than childbirth AND shingles.

I had the same conversation a few weeks later with a young woman whose father had just moved in with her. He, too, was descending into dementia. She, too, wept while talking to me.

In both of those moments, I was profoundly grateful that I could be there to listen. In a strange way, I was also thankful for what I had gone through in caring for my parents, especially my father.

I guess all pain IS a means to an end. When we share a painful experience with someone else — one we’ve been through and they’re going through — we can offer help and support that others cannot.

So many people have reached out to me about Shingles because they remember. They remember their discomfort. Now they’re on the other side of it cheerleading me on. “It’s awful, but you’ll get through it!”

The other night I woke up thinking about the W³ poetry prompt, which this week involved using opposites in a poem. I was in so much achy pain that my brain couldn’t comprehend there could be anything other than that in life.

“Siri,” I called to my phone on the nightstand, “what’s the opposite of pain?”

She responded in her matter-of-fact way. “The opposite of pain is pleasure.”

I couldn’t fathom pleasure at that moment. My middle of the night conversation with Siri did lead to a mediocre poem for W³, though.

Someday I’ll be able to sympathize and empathize and be an encouragement to someone else going through this. I can look forward to that.

In the meantime, I’m telling everyone to get the vaccine.