There will always be someone who suffers more deeply, more righteously, more rigorously, more appropriately with higher levels of pain; others with higher levels of accomplishment, achievement than me; like the amputee running a super marathon across the Sahara desert. Good for you. Good for the breath of God and good for fabulous prosthetics.
Me; how do I tell you about my puny sorrows, when even those have been commandeered by someone suffering more successfully than me and even yet from jahnt siede. Believe me, believe my pain, No matter. I agree Somebody has it worse. Sure. But believe you me when I tell you how much it hurts!
You share the story about the boy who used an axe to chop up the radiator hose his father beat him with. Pat commented on his father’s fury grown by his church and by extension, then at least, his God as he wielded the strap. Only twice did my father strap me black and blue. Both before I was sexually assaulted on holiday in 1965.
After we moved to Winnipeg in August of 1968 my parents would not believe my pain which had started earlier in summer; they accepted our rotund and jolly GP’s word that nothing was wrong. Initially the mis-diagnosis was “adjustment problems” as I was adjusting to puberty and living in a city.
After three months of suffering without belief, they did a simple test; they tried to bend my left heel to my left buttock. I screamed. I was in Emergency with a weight on my leg in no time flat. Dr Bruiser (that’s right!) pinned my hip with three four inch screws. After 3 months I was walking again, as if nothing had happened. While the pain in my hip subsided, it grew in my heart and my mind. My parents and I were through.
Similar circumstances in my ankle in 2017. FINALLY the surgeon took a closer look at a CT scan and he had to admit his attempt at an ankle fusion failed. I was the third out of 300, given the options I finally called for an amputation. But nobody laughed when under heavy sedation and an epidural block I joked; feeling some tugging, “Hey, you are pulling my leg.” Then it was gone. The left leg below the knee. My sense of humour grew, without it I would have no sense at all.