Feelin' No Pain ...

“Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas…the successful life we’re livin’ got us fuedin’ like the Hatfields and Mccoys…Out in Luckenbach, Texas, ain’t nobody feeling no pain.” Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

Oh, what a harsh audience you are!

Some have interpreted my latest Inanities as preludes to an obituary and impending demise. This is far from the truth, although that stark threshold is only two heartbeats away. You may be nearer than I am!

Consider these Absurdities in a metaphorical sense…you’ll be closer to the truth. Hint: “It’s the economy, stupid!” (Carville) There is a semblance of truth hidden within the epistle…can you find it?

I was in church Sunday, and The Voice inside my head shouted, “Quit discussing your age, your disgusts and your pains. You send negative signals to the brain.” Church Voices get my attention!

Yesterday, I was lying on Katie’s couch at PT Therapy getting electrotherapy to my aching back, reading about doomsday in the WSJ. Some Elitists have suggested there’s another Civil War going on, with Washington vs. Wall Street, and Main Street caught in the middle. Feel the pain yet?

Yeah, those two “institutions” we loathe but cannot escape. One maketh, the other taketh…both overreaching. Greed, avarice and the biggest lie of all, the promise of “transparency,” spurt from their lying lips and ooze over the landscape…even Bill Clinton “felt our pain.”

Lying there, contemplating my back pain (49 years of hard-core, unfettered athleticism), another voice echoed in my brain: “There’s a civil war going on inside your own body, you fool!” “Explain,” I responded. “OK. You’ve outlived your joints, and the mind is telling the body to do what it is no longer capable of…you’ve demanded more of the flesh than it can handle. Lighten up.” The voices speak truth!

I was curious about the electrotherapy, those four pulsating electrodes strapped to my lower spine. So I asked Katie and Sonja, “Explain this therapy to me.” They replied, as only youth can in that roll-of-the eyes, condescending tone, “We’ll try, but…” meaning, of course, “you dummy!” They tried. I think I got it.

It’s called the “Gate Control Theory.” Basically, there are two kinds of nerve fibers: One that transmits chronic, throbbing pain to the brain, and the other which does not. Electrotherapy is applied to the nerve fibers that do not transmit pain, and they disrupt the nerve fibers that do transmit pain signals. This supposedly breaks the cycle of pain impulses. Seems simple.

The best conclusion I could come up with was this electrotherapy “inhibits,” or anesthetizes, the pain impulses in much the same way as some other stimuli break the cycle of habits, good or bad. Sorta like a computer being hung up in the send/receive mode. Somehow the repetitive cycle must be broken. Got it?

What does that have to do with epic battle between the Wall Street, Main Street and Washington? Best I can tell it’s analogous to the age-old cycle of who’s in control. It may be muted, assuaged, but it will never end. This current “bailout battle” is just another Gettysburg with no winners, only corpses of the losers littering the landscape. A surfeit of monetary stimuli is being applied to the affected area in hopes of inhibiting some of the pain. One thing’s for sure: the aching body politic will not be the pain-free winner, nor the cycle broken for long!

I drifted off to sleep, knowing that my own body will never be 18 again. But at least for the moment, the pain was gone…and I’ll settle for that small relief.

Soon another voice seemed to awaken me. It was the bartender, shouting to the inebriated patrons, “Last Call.” I pinched myself…why, the pain was nearly gone. As I glanced around the room, all the smiling faces seemed to say their pain was almost gone, too. But only almost…nothing, you see, is ever permanent in this life!

“Hey, barkeep, I’ll have another one for the road. And by the way, how far did you say it was to Luckenbach?”

Hope your “inhibitor” is working as well as mine!


Bud Hearn
March 26, 2009