The Other Panacea

Itchy wet stitches
Hidden behind swollen cheeks
Post-op haiku flows.

Hollow hunger shouts
Whirling blender miracle
Straw slowly slurping. - Desperate attempts at haiku to stave off boredom (December 10, 2010).

Day 311. Okay. So I'm not the best patient. Recall that I was raised in a family that is freakishly awkward around infirmity. My ancestors roamed the Scottish highlands, protecting sheep herds while fighting off rogue enemy clans. My origins reflect dauntlessness and indomitability. I was made to be hardy, not to take pain meds. Which, incidentally, make my head wonky. It is tempting to sell them on the street for some extra holiday cash. At least that would break up the tedium of recovery. Pedaling something with two wheels has always been my panacea.

The universe, with its damnable and sadistic sense of humor, is conspiring against me. My partner came home from his sunset mountain bike ride all grins. Seems he met a dentist in the parking lot, and they rode the entire 10-mile lap together. What are the odds? My partner mentioned the irony of me at home recovering from a botched sinus lift while he is on a bike ride with a dentist, and the frigging dentist proceeded to tell him how dangerous it would be for me to ride in the next several days. According to this random, satanic, dentist-cum-mountain-biker, something as mild as blowing my nose could rupture my fragile sinus and require another surgery to repair it. Whatever. Sounds like a bunch of histrionic whooey to me.

I wasn't even going to believe the story, but my partner produced a business card from the guy that looks dangerously legit. Besides that, he was using some pretty convincing vocabulary that sounded remarkably similar to my surgeon's explanation (the remnants I recall through my analgesic fog). Being grounded from my bikes is definitely impeding my convalescence. And that was BEFORE the galaxy plunked a conservative, know-it-all, proffering unsolicited precautions, busybody of a dentist on the same trail at the same time my partner elected to grab a quick ride.

It's enough to make me swallow one of the scheduled narcotics my surgeon so generously and prolifically wrote out scripts for. But I will refrain. My neurons are saturated with Monkey chatter before I drape them in pharmaceuticals; I certainly don't need to agitate them further. At the risk of sounding anticlimactic, I'll cope the way I have been for the past 310 days. By getting my butt on the cushion. My other panacea.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc