Prediction: Pain

I’m generally a pretty lazy writer. While the amount of time it takes me to develop one these posts for “publication” can border on the ridiculous, it’s not a credit to any original thought in my head.

Most of my perspective, advice, and overall “knowledge”, if you want to call it that, comes from someone or something else. Maybe that’s why I’ve chosen to blog over finishing the book I’ve been churning on for years.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, there’s a glut of adulated writers, actors, and personalities in the world right now, thanks to me.

This is all preamble to brace you for a series of pop culture references….

As Chewey and I were walking around Ashley Pond not too long ago, we unwittingly stumbled into an area in which our two local geese were sitting. The geese are beloved staples of the pond community, so much so that the county has named them. The male is named Ed, and his female partner is named….well, Female Partner.

But this was the first time Chewey had ever seen geese, so Chewey did what Chewey does…he approached these two mysteries of life. At first, the geese seemed as intrigued with Chewey as he was with them. Then things took a turn for the worse, as the geese transformed from tranquil feathers of gleaming white into the Rabbit of Caerbannog (1st lazy reference).

In a master-class of battlefield strategy, which provided me all the proof I needed to completely subscribe to Dr. Alan Grant’s theory that Velociraptor’s had indeed evolved from birds (2nd lazy reference), both geese began hissing and charging at Chewey from opposing sides.

Chewey, now in full retreat mode, and in utter terror, did all he could to evade the Luftwaffe-esque (3rd) assault of the birds, but was eventually bitten, causing him to yelp in the sort of way no parent wants to hear.

For my part, while initially stunned by the turn of events, I went into full protective mode and started throwing hands at the hell-spawned waterfowls. Clearly intimidated by a man doing his best impression of Ben Stiller’s Mr. Furious (4th), the geese retreated to the pond as I trash-talked their cowardice.

Inspecting Chewey for damage, the only pain I found was in his eyes, as he couldn’t seemingly grasp how he had inspired such hostility.

But as it turned out, Chewey wasn’t the only one experiencing pain that day, because what neither Chewey nor I knew at the time of this Anatidaen attack, was that the geese were soon-to-be parents, and they had already lost four of their eleven eggs to predators.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” - a farm boy (5th)

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, my left leg does not look quite right. No one would look at my left leg, let alone an x-ray of it, and think to themselves “I wish that were my leg”. But, despite the appearance of it, I can walk, and I am tremendously grateful to the doctors who got it in working order, which was a process involving two years of adjustments and surgical procedures. In fact, “grateful” strikes me as a risible understatement when I think of just how close I came to having it amputated.

On September 12, 2021 my entire body was effectively broken from my motorcycle accident, but the limb which arguably took the most damage was that leg, which was left dangling from my body by ligament and tissue. The type of break I had suffered that day is what doctors call an open (bone breaking through the skin) comminuted fracture (a fracture where the bones are broken into several fragments and are not aligned).

One of the most immediate needs in the race to save my leg was the surgical replacement of a large quantity of tissue I had lost from about the middle of my calf down to the heel of my foot. Without this functioning tissue, the healing powers of my blood flow would not have been able to occur, eventually causing Osteonecrosis (or bone death) of my tibia and fibula (tib/fib).

So a skin graft procedure to replace the loss of tissue had to be done before any surgical repairs to my tib/fib could be attempted.

In the meantime, to hold my tib/fib together so that my leg wouldn’t simply fall off, I had three large bronze-looking rods drilled into my leg, with one being above the break on the tib/fib, one below the break, and one that was drilled through my heel which had a metal frame attached to it. The frame, which looked like a tripod, was a necessary attachment that served to keep my skinless calf area from touching the hospital bed, reducing the risk of infection.

The skin that would be used to graft onto my left leg actually came by way of my right leg. A sizable chunk of tissue from the quad of my right leg was surgically removed and placed onto my lower left leg.

Then it was a waiting game to see if the graft would actually bond with my leg. To stimulate the blood flow to the newly grafted skin, I would have nurses come in every four hours to put leeches on my “new” skin. In a process reminiscent of a science fiction movie, these leeches would grow upwards of ten times the size they started out when they were placed upon me, courtesy of engorging themselves on my blood. While disgusting, and horrifying, I have those leeches to thank for helping to save my leg, so in an attempt to find some levity in the situation I would name each of my new little buddies after some of the Laker greats (have I mentioned I’m a die-hard Los Angeles Lakers fan?), such as Kareem and Earvin (6th). In hindsight, I wish I had named them after members of the 80’s Boston Celtics, in a symbolic nod to them sucking, but I digress.

Thankfully, after a few weeks, the graft took, and then the fun really began when my orthopedic surgeon got a hold of me.

After an initial surgery to straighten my leg failed, I went back under the knife a few days later, this time to install a stabilizing rod. The pain from all of my surgeries was intense, but this particular surgery pushed me past the number ten of the Wong-Baker pain scale. In fact, when asked to assign a number to my new pain by my medical team, I think I undersold it a bit when I declared it to be an eleven.

Meanwhile, thanks to a Covid outbreak on the floor I was assigned to, I was unable to have visitors during this time. The phrase “the beatings will continue until morale improves” began swirling around in my mind (7th) . Due to this same outbreak, following my surgery, all non-positive Covid patients were paired together, so I inherited a roommate. This could have been a blessing in disguise, but my roommate was a young man who had been badly burned on over three quarters of his body, and as such had to receive frequent curettage treatments to remove his dead or dying skin. This man’s screams of pain will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I can’t be certain, but as I think back on this experience now, I can’t help but think that the roots of my addiction to narcotics can all be traced back to this combination of my roommate’s necessary medical torture, along with my own intense post-surgical pain and isolation from friends and family.

The term “staying in front of the pain” gets tossed around a lot in the hospital, and it effectively means what it sounds like: if you can take your pain medication before things start hurting too much, it’s far easier to manage than if you take your meds after you are already at a high level of pain. Not only did this make sense to me, but after this experience I was determined to never be behind the pain again, even if that pain was of the psychological variety.

I’d seen him just two weeks earlier…

The “brothers”, which was the universal name we had adopted for one another, consisted of about a dozen men I had just spent thirty long days with in the addiction recovery facility we affectionately dubbed “The Mountain”.

After our discharge in late May and early June of ‘23, the brothers began a group text chat as a means of staying connected. These text messages from my brothers, which had become vital to my post-addiction recovery, ranged from sharing our attempts to acclimate back into our life situations, to humorous anecdotes, to messages of hope and words of encouragement. Lorenzo was one of the brothers, and while he didn’t always contribute in terms of volume, what he did contribute was almost always welcome and positive.

Several of the brothers had been trying to reconnect, in person, since we went our separate ways, and finally after about a month of negotiations, we were able to find a day in July that worked for most of us to meet at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Albuquerque.

The meeting was one I had never been to, but it was an all-too-familiar scene, which included around 50 men and women who were all bonded by the common struggle of beating the disease of addiction.

Lorenzo was in attendance, but right away I could tell something was different about the young man I had come to know just two months prior. Normally an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent man of few words, at this meeting he seemed distracted, and almost manic by his standards. He was struggling to focus on the words of speakers who were sharing their stories, and could be frequently heard talking in the background during each monologue. This wasn’t like him, as he had always showed such great interest, patience, and deference when anyone was speaking at The Mountain.

The one hour meeting concluded, and the eight brothers who were able to make the meeting all gathered out in the parking lot to hug, talk, joke, and fellowship.

As I hugged Lorenzo, tightly, I pulled away from him and looked into his dark eyes for a moment. I could already confirm from that look, what I had feared throughout the meeting….he was not sober.

This was a new kind of awkward for me, but as his senior of almost twenty years I had come to view Lorenzo, like many of the younger men I inhabited The Mountain with, as a son. So I asked him how he was doing, understanding I was going to get a canned response, which I did.

I continued to probe, asking a series of questions which began to take the form of an interview. What I never asked him, and wish I had, was whether he was actively using any substances.

After about thirty minutes of talking, I hugged him goodbye, told him I loved him, and made him aware that I was available for anything at any time of the day.

That was the last time I would ever see Lorenzo. Two weeks later I received word that he was in an intensive care unit, as a result of an overdose. One week later, this young man, who had meant so much to so many, including me, was pronounced brain dead.

Lorenzo’s relapse and subsequent death changed everything in my life. I had dealt with the death of loved ones previously, but maybe because I had only known him for 60 days I rationalized that I would be insulated from feeling the pain of his loss. I was wrong. His death set off a torrent of wild emotions within me.

It scared me. I was scared for me, because if someone who by all outward indications was truly committed to turning his life around could fall victim to relapse, couldn’t this also happen to me? I was scared for the other men I had graduated with. They had truly become like brothers to me, and I couldn’t bear to see any other casualties of this personal war we were all waging. I was angry. Angry at addiction. Angry at the manufacturers and dealers of these drugs. Angry with the experiences Lorenzo had to endure in his life which set him down this path of addiction. Most of all I was saddened beyond words, at the loss of my friend, and for the pain his family would now have to endure. All of these emotions would be normal, but what wasn’t normal for me was that this was the first time in too-long-to-remember that I had to deal with feelings like this without the ability to numb with drugs or alcohol.

The immediate days following the news of Lorenzo’s passing reminded me of a young Clark Kent grappling with his emerging powers in the janitorial closet of Smallville Elementary in “Man of Steel” (8th). I literally didn’t know how to manage my emotions and the pain was debilitating.

So I did what every healthy person does, and I blamed something else for what I was feeling. Truthfully I wanted to blame anything other than me, because I was now overwhelmed with guilt that I hadn’t done more when I saw Lorenzo in July. I isolated, and withdrew from “The Brothers” text thread because I didn’t want to feel like this again if the unthinkable should happen, and any of the rest of my brothers fall victim to relapse.

I knew, statistically speaking, that someone within our group would relapse, and possibly even die, but after everything we had been through together, I felt (naively) that there would be no way this could happen to this group of men.

Lazy reference #9…

“Part of the reason we relapse is because of pain. There’s some kind of pain in a lot of us, all of us, that we just don’t want to feel anymore. The further we fall into addiction and pain says to us: Hell, it’d be better off just feeling nothing at all, until we go numb and our souls go numb. Now we got a real problem. You know, pain is just pain. Not good, not bad, just part of being a human being. And sometimes, good can come out of it. And if we're brave enough and willing to go a little deeper, work our way through it, and try to overcome it, well, we just might find our better selves..” - Dr. Samuel Finnix

Three months ago, on April 15th, I was asked to come back to The Mountain to share my story with what would be the final class of recovering addicts. The Mountain, I learned, would be closing its doors for good, after almost 20 years of incalculable service to the northern New Mexico community. It was such a great honor for me to do this, and it was a reminder to me of just how important the community of recovery is.

After lunch, and after I had shared my story with this new group of brothers, I wanted to take in as many sights as I could, sadly knowing this would be the last time I would ever be able to set foot on the grounds of a place that helped to save my life. As I stood outside of the dining lodge, my eyes locked onto a large board that was painted white. The board was a familiar site to me, as it served as a sort of memorial for those who had gone through the recovery program. Before anyone left The Mountain we were asked to write something on this large piece of painted wood. Not everyone took the opportunity to observe the unofficial tradition, but many had, including me. As I sat and stared at the board, a smile broke out on my face as I read both inspiring and humorous writings from men I knew, and from many I didn’t, but all from men whom I now shared a brotherhood. As I continued to scan the board, I was drawn to one particular quote which read:

“Forgiveness is not for others, it’s for yourself, let that shit go! - 5/25/23”

It was signed by my departed friend, Lorenzo, and as I read it I felt a wave of peace come over me. Lorenzo was allowing me to forgive myself for not doing more to help him nine months earlier.

A few weekends after our encounter with the geese, Chewey and I returned to Ashley Pond. As we turned the corner of the walking path, we approached a set of rocks which poked out from underneath the water, which was commonly used as a sunbathing perch for the pond wildlife. As we got closer to the rocks I could see Ed and his partner. But this time they weren’t alone, as they were now joined by their newborn gosling. Chewey and I both stopped and stared as the family of geese reciprocated. For that beautiful moment, we were all happy, and there was no sign of pain in any of our eyes.