A pill, a kidney, a knee and a few stones

After complaining at the local medical clinic this week that my right testicle was constantly sore, the doctor prescribed Voltaren, a strong anti-inflammatory. Well, the drug didn’t do much for my balls, but it sure did wonders for my knees. For the first time in years, I felt totally free and fleet of foot (like when I was a teenager). No joint pain at night, none while working, none hiking with a heavy pack (carrying stones) and none running. Fantastic. What a thrill.

Remember the 1990 movie, Awakenings, where a man (played by Robert De Niro) is brought out of a decades-long, trance like sleep through the use of the drug L-DOPA? Loosely based on a true story by neurologist Oliver Sacks, De Niro’s character is exuberant with his new found freedom, but eventually realises that the drug that brought him out of his long term semi-coma is not long lasting enough to permanently keep him “awake”. Slowly he will slide back into his isolated world.

I will admit to crying when he asks one of the nurses to have a last dance with him. Can anyone even begin to imagine what anguish this man would have felt knowing that soon he would no longer be able to hold onto a woman and move freely, confidently across the dance floor?

Certainly not as dramatic as the movie, but my magic pills put me between a rock and a hard spot, as well. You see, the tiny writing on the package warned that I could take the pills for five days only because of the possible adverse affect on my liver and kidneys with prolonged usage. Aware that my testicular pain is tied in with a kidney that has passed kidney stones and that extra precaution has to be exercised when taking drugs, I knew that my knee’s new found freedom would be short lived.

Sadly, reluctantly, I popped one, last pill, did a little jog on the beach, danced a sweet dance on the lawn … and then waited for the return of the ongoing daily ache of arthritic knees.

But…… not before I was able to experience once again what William Stafford writes:

Most mornings I get away, slip out
the door before light, set forth on the dim, gray
road, letting my feet find a cadence
that softly carries me on. Nobody
is up–all alone my journey begins.

(from the poem, Run before Dawn)

Or….. what Marge Piercy writes:

It is not the running I love, thump
thump with my leaden feet that only
infrequently are winged and prancing,
but the light that glints off the cattails
as the wind furrows them, the rum cherries
reddening leaf and fruit, the way the pines
blacken the sunlight on their bristles,
the hawk circling, stooping, floating
low over beige grasses,….

(from the poem, Morning athletes)

I’m now back to a slower, more careful walk through life’s wonders. Still, it was a blessing of sorts, those few days when I was transported to a time when the body had no wounds and knew no pain.