I broke my right arm and dislocated my wrist seven months ago, on my birthday. I had to have surgery to set it. I found that pain is a very big sense memory trigger for me. In the ER, when I was told I was going to get morphine, I suddenly wished for the ability to grab the vial, go back in time a few years to any number of nights my late husband was in pain without painkillers, set the vial on the porch to his room, and go back to the present. That desire surprised me, as I don\u2019t think that way. I\u2019m doing what he wanted–for me to live my own life on my own terms. I\u2019m happy with my life and don\u2019t have any desire to turn back time. <\/p>\n
The same desire happened when I got taken into a room to await surgery and was given Dilaudid. Thankfully, when it kicked in I was able to toss that thought aside. I was given a prescription for Percocet, which I filled a little guiltily and after having to explain to the pharmacy that I\u2019d just had surgery on my arm (note the arm in the sling!) and was going to recuperate at my parent\u2019s house. The next day, I decided to take half a Percocet after lunch, as the ibuprofen wasn\u2019t doing much about the pain. I couldn\u2019t remember if I\u2019d taken the pill or not, so I decided to pour them out to count them. The sight of all those pills made me wish for the time machine again. I poured them back into the bottle as fast as I could, discovered the pill was actually on the kitchen counter, took it, and ran to my room. I hate crying as I did that day. I\u2019ve already felt the pain of being helpless to help someone\u2019s agony before, and I don\u2019t need to revisit it because I was given a limited dose of painkillers appropriate for my injury. I did so much crying the first few years after my husband died. It\u2019s been just over 4 years now, and I\u2019ve done the work to process those 18 years of my life and move on. I enjoy living in the present, as it contains my Sweetie. <\/p>\n
Today I got an MRI on that hand. I knew I had to stay still in an enclosed place, and I was fine with that. I was given earplugs and told it would be loud. What I didn\u2019t expect was to feel like I\u2019d spent 20 minutes inside a synthesizer. Immediately, my mind flashed to my late husband making very similar noises at similar intervals to the noise that was going on around me. I felt myself in his old room, where we worked, ate, played Scrabble, watched lots of media, listened to lots of music, laughed, and cried. I don\u2019t need to revisit all that. That part of my life is over, and again, I\u2019ve made peace with that. <\/p>\n
I decided to \u201cfight\u201d sinking into that feeling that was being prompted by all the noise around me. I knew I could keep it together if I tried. So, I tried to think of something in the present that would calm me. My mind\u2019s eye showed me cuddling with my Sweetie. It helped. When the noise would change, I\u2019d have to refocus on that image. I kept thinking that I didn\u2019t want to sink into the messiness of missing my late husband. It was such a mercurial relationship that it\u2019s not easy to reflect upon. I\u2019d rather think of my present, where my Sweetie and I are building a life together that we both enjoy living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I broke my right arm and dislocated my wrist seven months ago, on my birthday. I had to have surgery to set it. I found that pain is a very big sense memory trigger for me. In the ER, when I was told I was going to get morphine, I suddenly wished for the ability… Continue reading Ugh, Sense Memory<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[18,19,20],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daphne","category-journal","tag-mri","tag-pain","tag-sense-memory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fVx5-3c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}