“If you live in a house of the body which has become a house of chronic pain, you are welded and wedded to it all the while wanting like hell to escape.”
"Rugs love me, are intimate with me. I know their relative quality, their deepest secrets..." Berger p.37
“Also a relentless dominatrix, pain makes you cringe from the constant self-referring. But because you do feel ruined, especially at first, it’s almost impossible to do otherwise, though you promise yourself not to complain in front of others.....”

“Estranged and burdened, the two labor to make it through the hours, traveling inch by inch through the miles of a day." Berger p.49

“Is there nothing optimistic to say? No benefits to the solitude or confinement? Nothing good that was harvested?”
“Try, as they say in cheerful pamphlets, to make pain your companion. But pain gives almost nothing back, gives only endless time. Its only gift is cessation; it is encoded only with potential relief from itself. “ Berger p47

 

“The house of the body in pain is furnished with inexact metaphors that resist tidy medical labeling, and with approximate descriptions of extreme states. You find yourself at a loss, with language running dry just when needed most...”Berger, p.49


“What about the soul? If the body is the temple in ruins, in confinement?”

And the pure possibility of free thought, infinite thought, is set starkly against the confinement of the body, now unreliable, now restraining the mind like a quirky harness. .......

“Since pain can neither be verified nor denied in many cases, the person in pain is doubted---are you malingering or overdramatizing? ---which only then amplifies the pain. With only vivid, but subjective comparisons to “defend” ourselves with, we can hardly communicate at all. ....” Berger p.49

Devastated, she could no longer sit or stand due to onset of severe chronic pain. “I can't help you, you’ll have to learn to live with it." A statement made by an orthopeadic physician at Mass General Hospital, 1984, to Deborah Page age 31, who had lost her ability to earn her livelihood, and her freedom to move around in the world.

 

Rugs Love Me   Chronic Pain is a Relentless Dominatrix   Harnessed by Pain   The Doctor said; “I can’t help you” “You’ll have to learn to live with it”   We can’t find anything wrong with you- you must be lying about the pain!   But pain gives almost nothing back   Welded and Wedded to Pain
Part One Title Page
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