Empathy Lesson

Saturday was a beautiful day and I got together with three good friends to walk 18 holes at Bonneville golf course. The course surrounds a baseball field and a tennis center, and both were full. You could hear the crack of a bat and kids cheering at the ball diamond at various times. A road runs through the course and it is a favorite place for bikers, runners and walkers. Everyone was out enjoying the spring sunshine and a person would have to be a curmudgeon not to be infected by the joy.

My right shoulder and arm have been bothering me. I figured I overexerted myself in some silly way, like opening a jar for Tita. These things seem to happen more as I get older. Or maybe it is another residue of all my baseball-playing days. I would never tell the coach that my arm hurt because I never wanted to come out of the game...even when the arm was screaming in pain.

About the back nine everything began to hurt, especially my neck and feet. By the time we were done it felt like I was walking on my foot bones. It felt like my bones hurt. I was also stiff and fatigued. I almost missed the ball a couple times off the tee.

The other thought was that this could be a side-effect of the statins I have been taking. My doc warned me about "achiness." (It is amazing the terms the medical profession has for pain...such as discomfort.) My dad confirmed it for me today. He said that when he was taking Lipitor he got so he couldn't walk up the stairs.

I cannot help but wonder what those people who think we should get rid of Social Security think we should do with the old people and sick people who depend on its financial assistance. Throw them out in the streets?

When I was sick with ulcerative colitis I experienced the worst pain I ever had in my life. Only someone who has felt his intestines spasm knows at all what I am talking about it. Or how it feels to be shitting blood every half hour. Even if we try to empathize with someone else, we can never know what it is like. There are many painful disorders, some of which we somewhat understand the causal process, like cancer and pancreatitis. There are others that we don't. I have no doubt that some people who are diagnosed with fibromyalgia experience extreme pain.

I also found out how easily personality could be altered by brain chemistry when I was taking large doses of prednisone, which made me manic. I would never have slept without some powerful sleeping pills, and those only gave me 3-4 hours per night. And then I experienced clinical depression when I came off it.

Tita was sitting reading the paper this morning with her neck warmer on because she had a migraine, a fairly commom occurrence. I don't know what it is like but I am pretty sure it is not fun. Maybe we all should be a little more sympathetic to those who are suffering and thankful if we are not.