Word: painful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Growing up, I always thought, "Someday I will be able to turn decades and decades of personal pain into professional gain." I feel like I almost have to apologize for writing a book this young, but secretly, it's a serious book about depression. When I was younger, I read a lot of David Sedaris, and it made me feel like if this guy could go through all this crazy stuff and come out a great writer, then maybe I could too. So that was my goal: to be a less gay David Sedaris...
...Jerry had two bad hips; the joints didn't form quite right as he grew up. They degenerated and started to hurt as he entered his 60s. When he first started coming to me, I gave him the usual anti-inflammatory medications we use for arthritis pain. He had no side effects, but he wasn't helped much either, so he stopped the pills and lived with the pain. Then he found turmeric. (See pictures of Cleveland's smarter approach to health care...
...Soon enough, there was no pain at all. And his lower back and hands, which ached before, were also now pain-free. So I was curious last year, when at age 73 he came in and told me he was ready for a hip replacement. "It's just so stiff" is all he would say. He certainly had the limp, the trouble with stairs and the slow rise from a chair that you see in folks with hip arthritis. His X-ray showed bone-on-bone erosion and plenty of spurring; his examination showed the profound loss of motion...
...denied it. Even when I did the twisting maneuver we use to see if it's the hip that hurts, there was no wince, no ouch. I had never done the operation for anyone without pain. I explained this. And reasonable though he was, he still wanted a new hip, "to get rid of the stiffness...
...still chalked it up, then at least, to psychology. This worked fine until about six weeks ago, when we did his other hip. He got better even faster. Home the second day. No pain meds. Lots of yellow capsules on the table. I decided to get some for myself. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...