Bellicose Varicose

Today the honeybees woke up in NJ and swarmed about. The first flowers opened, purple crocuses with yellow centers. The kitten piñata Shaka Zulu lay in the garden napping. Blueberry the cat, her son, brought his first mole to the doorstep. The creature was still warm, like a tiny precious seal of the earth, his soft little flippers. I said a little prayer for him or her and laid it in the flowerbed with the crocuses, so at least its bones could come back as flowers.

It’s always something. For the past two weeks I have been elevating my leg. It didn’t like flying west a month ago, now it doesn’t like anything. That season when I ended up at the ER multiple times was followed by a strange array of symptoms, from cardiac shuddering to a skin cancer scare to an infected eye to heel fissures to migraines to this lump in my lower left leg. It had seemed like a lump in the muscle and would flare up and down during the month, like everything else wrong with me. Finally, I was getting better in most ways but the lump was getting worse, and that night after I got off the plane in Seattle a few weeks ago, I could barely use my left knee or leg.

The week that followed found it stiff and swollen and me lying awake at night in pain, thinking it might be a tumor and they might have to amputate if something was not named, was not diagnosed and treated soon enough. (Actually, I had had one doc check it the year before but he was not sure what it was and I described it truthfully as the least of my complaints at that dire time.) This time I had two docs look at it and one considered it might be a cyst, though he did not do a very thorough exam. The other doctor was pretty certain it was a deep varicose vein. I had never heard of deep and excruciating lumpy veins. (There is no sign of it from the surface.) He recommended an ultrasound and a visit to the Vein Care Center to be certain. Also said to try compression stockings and an herbal supplement, this surprised me to hear an MD recommend an herbal supplement, but cool. Then unintentionally I made things worse by having too much fun trying out my parent’s wii. (pronounced wee, whee, Ouch!) The wii that broke my knee. Who knew helping a penguin catch fish while balanced on an iceberg could be so satisfying? But what the wii really taught me is that humans have not evolved to play video games with their feet.

The gulping of more ibuprofen. Then I flew east. My leg really did not like the flight. I read about varicose veins and didn’t really like what I read. I am in pain now and so I alternate between taking good walks which I think are essential for overall health, and then keeping the leg as high up as possible when not walking or cooking. My leg is up now. Last night it was crying in the night. It whimpers. My knee whimpers.

I recall when my otherwise healthy brother, the one I feel somehow avoided the family genetic health ailments that the females suffer, ended up with a condition that made his knee look like a skull. He was very brave. I teased him that he was pregnant in his knee and that his homunculus would pop out. He had to have surgery. As a result, he missed his opportunity to dress up in colonial gear for some historic family reenactment.

Of course little moles and mice have souls.
Does pain have a soul too?