Painkiller and Other More Serious Preoccupations … July 14, 2009

My love for well-placed curse words has been vindicated.  According to a British research study, “swear words can have a powerful pain-killing effect.” There have been lots of articles written about this the past day or so, but if you haven’t read about this yet you can do so here.

An excerpt for you …

The researchers originally thought that swearing would make pain worse by focusing a person’s attention on the injury and its implications. To prove their hypothesis, they set up an experiment with 67 college students.

The students were asked to plunge their hands into frigid 41-degree Fahrenheit water for as long as they could stand the pain. Half were told to repeat their favorite curse word while their hands were submerged. The other half were asked to repeat a neutral word describing a table, such as solid or brown, while keeping their hands under water. Then the whole experiment was repeated with the two groups switching types of word. (Favorite swear words were, as you might guess, the ones starting with “F” and “S.” But since the subjects were British, the researchers also got an earful of “bollocks.”)

To the researchers’ surprise, the cursing group not only reported lower levels of pain, but also were able to keep their hands in the icy water longer. The men in the study, for example, were able to keep their hands in the water for an average of 190 seconds while swearing, but for only 140 seconds when uttering a neutral word.

The difference was even more pronounced in women. While men’s pain scores dropped by a point when they cussed, the women’s dropped by almost two full points.

So that year when I ran The Belt and stubbed my already broken toe and then ran off down the trail leaving a long stream of expletives behind me?  That was just some smart pain management. ;-)

That was the humorous part of the post. Other news this week is not so good …

I’ll start with the easy stuff.  I went back to the doctor last week to have more blood drawn, just to confirm that everything is fine now that The Virus From Hell has gone back from whence it came.  Well, everything that was off before is now fine (white blood cells, platelet count, and a liver enzyme) but now a different enzyme level in my liver is off , so my doctor is still worried.  The end result is I am off all meds except one allergy spray … no painkillers (OTC or otherwise), no Chinese herbs (which my doc is otherwise quite supportive of my taking), nothing … for a few weeks, at which time I get to go back for more blood tests. I’m hoping this is just from taking Tylenol for 10 days, since I almost never take stuff like this normally.  I wish I could blame this on something fun or naughty like a bender, but I’m so freaking clean-living these days I hardly even drink anymore.

It would be nice to just have my body back to normal.  I mean, I feel fine … I ran 28 miles this past Saturday, I’ve been doing great with my new strength training rountine, I’ve been stronger than I expected in Ashtanga Yoga classes … so I’m hopeful that the next test will not show anything still out of whack. It better not … the test is only 1 week before Headlands 50 Miler, and I’m already nervous enough about this race. My training is pretty good, but obviously behind where I had hoped to be right now, and I’m having to revise my goals in order to respect my body’s need to recover. Of course, they wanted to schedule the blood draw for the Monday after the race, but I vetoed that quickly … if I let them take blood after an ultra, they’d probably think I was dying when they got the results back.

Actually, in light of the past few days, that last comment really isn’t so funny. This is kind of hard for me to write about, but I’m going to write it anyway because I need all of you out there reading to send positive prayers, thoughts, vibes, whatever it is you believe in. I briefly mentioned in my last post that there was a new guy in my life. I hadn’t planned to elaborate, but this is a special circumstance. His name is Bo and he’s still as fantastic a person as he was last week … but Sunday he was in a pretty bad cycling accident, and it looks like he’ll be ok but he’s got some pretty serious injuries. After spending time with him yesterday I am less freaked out than I was when I didn’t know what was going on … he’s conscious and coherent, and most importantly thanks to his bicycle helmet he’s alive. But he’s got some surgery and some major recovery coming up, so all of your prayers, thoughts, vibes, support, etc. would be much appreciated.

I’m going to leave it there for now … except to say that I’ll try to update when I can, but I expect life to be a little crazy for the next several weeks, and I hope you’ll understand that blogging may not be a priority. Who knows, it could turn out to be a helpful outlet (as it has in the past), but right now I’m just taking each day as it comes and trying to hold it all together and thanking God and the universe and my lucky stars that we’re all alive to tell our tales.