Pain Management

Defense against the Dark Arts

I've started drinking my coffee black. Milk is everywhere, around and on me. My coffee remains untouched. Bitter and sweet from the hit of maple syrup, but otherwise untempered. 

I'm not sure where I fall on the spectrum regarding pain tolerance. I have broken bones and herniated discs. I have lost people I love. I have lost myself. I have considered, many times, that it might all be too much to bear. 

Getting my first tattoo was a tangible way to gauge what I could withstand physically. The pain was not excruciating by any stretch, but it was uncomfortable at best, and a pretty real exercise in being present in one's body. There was no escaping. I just had to sit there and feel it. I imagine that's what childbirth is like times a billion.

I still hope to experience that particular sort of pain, to truly test the limits of my body. To prove to myself that I am strong and that I have something tangible to contribute to this earth. 

Lately it seems like the world is full of an endless, roiling wave of pain and suffering. The ebbs are more persistent than the flows. But perhaps it has always been this way and we are just now more aware of it due to the media's ever sharpening gaze. The source of the pain may be different, but its presence remains constant. 

We soldier ever onward. 

On the farm, the incidence of sickness and death is more frequent than that which I've experienced before, not because of any shortcomings in management or care, but due sheerly to the scale. What it might have taken a passel of years for me to encounter in a herd of 40 goats rears up in a matter of months in a herd of 120+. The cycle of life and death, of joy and sorrow, is condensed into hours. Taffy had her two bouncy off-season babies, and in the same afternoon, two doelings fell sick. One, we figured out, had meningeal worms, a ruthless parasite that's extra virulent this time of year when white tailed deer flit through the fields, leaving their droppings, which host the nasty things. If you catch it early, it is not a death sentence, but our girl's mobility will be compromised for most of her life. 

The other doeling wasn't as lucky. She'd gotten listless, stopped eating, peeing, shitting. Her temperature was low, which is a much more dangerous thing than a fever, because it indicates that the organs are failing. The vet thought perhaps it was peritonitis but could not be sure. We tried to flush her with mineral oil to get things moving, with epsom salts. She started to grind her teeth in pain, and that familiar, labored breathing that I cannot ever forget from watching Katydid die began. I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't let another animal suffer, but I've yet to get to the point where I can confidently, comfortably euthanize one. I have never shot a gun, and that, though it sounds brutal, is one of the more humane ways to put a sick animal down, assuming you are practiced and know exactly where to aim. 

We propped her up on a mound of soft hay so that she would be comfortable.

In the morning she was gone. 

Sometimes, awful as it is, you have to let go and let nature take its course, which seems especially cruel since really there is nothing natural about dairy farming. It is, even in the best of cases, a manipulation, an exploitation. There is always suffering, pain, death. The only comfort I take is in knowing that I have done everything I can to make the animals feel loved when they're in my care. I suppose the same can be said of my fellow humans. 

We're all here for such a short time, and we are all going to suffer immensely at some point or other. We can try to steel ourselves, test our limits, scarify our bodies and hearts and inure ourselves, go numb. But the pain seeps in and pierces us no matter what. 

We must be gentle with each other, and with ourselves. It's the only defense we have.