• Ruminations

    Chronic Pain and Perspective

    I live with pain every day. The worst of it is in my right leg and foot – a result of being struck by a car in 2011. My leg was broken, the ankle dislocated, the nerve damaged, and the injury developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). After about eighteen months of rehab, hydrotherapy, and pain seminars, the surgeon confessed he never expected me to recover as much as I did. He told me he expected the foot to be all shriveled and shiny from the nerve damage. In my last appointment with him several months later, he laughed when I asked if it’d ever recover fully. He said the…

  • Ruminations

    Karen

    I hate that “Karen” has crept into the vernacular as an insult. Growing up as a teen in the 1980s, I used to endure a barrage of “lesbian” and “lezzo” as a play on my name. During one Year 8 English class, the teacher (who was often the victim of innuendo because he might’ve been gay) stopped the class to go through the room, person by person, and ask them if they’d ever been made fun of and how they’d been made fun of. Then he’d ask the class if they’d ever made fun of that person in that way. When it got to me, the bulk of the class…