Nothing funny about feldspar

I’ve been thinking about pain lately. Mine had more-or-less become intermittent, and after the PT and so on, it was becoming less frequent.

But when I hurt, I hurt pretty badly, and I’ve been hurting more often. I’m thinking it’s because I’m feeling better and so do more than I had been (like carrying laundry, or washing the dishes, or doing more than microwave cookery or even pulling weeds). I went to my back doctor, complaining that while I don’t take strong pain medicine very often, I don’t like how it makes me feel hungover.

So he gave me a scrip for a new med. I am not going to mention it here, because I’m tired of cleaning spam comments out of moderation.

Anyway, I looked it up at NIH, and I was struck by a couple of things. First, the blanket “Don’t take this if you’re allergic to it” statement was expanded to “Don’t take this if you’re allergic to it, or to anything even remotely like it, or corn.” Corn?! I thought wheat allergens were hard to avoid, but eliminating corn allergens must be even more difficult. (No wheat in cola, for instance, but lotsa corn syrup.)

The second thing: “This medicine works by decreasing the body’s sense of pain.” Is it pain if you can’t feel it?

I suppose it depends on what one means by pain. Physiologically, my back is probably still creating the “Pain! Pain!” alarm (I will keep imagining Spock + Horta, won’t I?), but the signal’s been muffled by the med. But if my brain doesn’t hear it, how can it be pain?

Much too philosophical for me at the moment…