The Painful Self: Flesh and Body

We begin with what the Canadian Pain Coalition has to say about pain:

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as an unpleasant
sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or
described in terms of such damage. Pain is divided into two broad categories; acute and
chronic. Acute pain which is associated with ongoing tissue damage serves as the bodys
warning system that something is wrong and medical attention may be required. The
experience of pain can be minimal or excruciating at the time however when the cause of
the pain and the pain itself are treated with best practice medicine and healing occurs, the
pain usually subsides and is forgotten. Examples of causes of acute pain are childbirth, a
broken limb, appendicitis or surgery. Chronic pain, which is generally taken to be pain
that has persisted for longer than three to six months or beyond the natural time of
healing serves no purpose in the body. This pain can range from mild to excruciating
however it does not subside and is constantly present or intermittently persistent.
Examples of causes of constant chronic pain are: pain accompanying chronic diseases
like arthritis, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis; 20% of acute pain that is not adequately
managed; pain associated with cancer treatments and pain that continues without
explanation after normal healing has occurred. Migraine headache represents
intermittently persistent pain which has severe impact on a regular basis but in most cases
is not constant. Regardless of the cause, when pain becomes long term it develops its own
set of physiological and psychological mechanisms and therefore should be referred to
and managed as a chronic disease. People of all ages are afflicted with pain from the
tiniest infant to the person who experiences pain at the end of life. For them poorly
managed chronic pain is devastating. It can destroy their lives and families. It assaults
their dignity and self esteem. At the very least the pain is disruptive and demoralizing. At
its worst, the pain can turn deadly. People with chronic pain speak about their pain like
this: It burns, it stabs, it throbs, and it stings. It never stops. It hurts so badly I can
hardly function. Its killing me. I cant hold my baby because of my pain. I cant support
my family because of my pain. Its ruining my life. Its destroying my family. I cant live
anymore with this pain. My pain is evil. Why cant someone make it stop, please.

The soft palate at the back of my mouth collapses during sleep. My breathing
stops twenty times each night. Since my oxygen supply drops, I wake up groggy, grumpy
and un-refreshed.
My body is mine yet it is inhabited by that which threatens me. I was not aware
that a faulty piece of design was responsible for my lack of rest and that I could be
revitalized through a technological intervention.
The body becomes flesh in extreme moments where pleasure and pain collide.
These lived intensities make the nerves pulse in ways previously un-experienced.
The throat surgeon tells me that the laser surgery will feel like having a bad case
of strep throat. It is the work like that puts me on edge. The pain I am now
experiencing is unlike anything I have ever felt. The laser pulses with a light that

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vaporizes flesh. I smell the back of my throat burning. Smoke comes out of my mouth;
wisps of charred remains.
The freezing spray hit the back of my uvula and makes me gag. The liquid is
sprayed into my nostrils to calm the membranes, but the recoil makes me choke. The
anesthetic delivered through the needle point numbs the roof of my mouth. Tears flow
without effort my cheeks. It is too late to get up and leave
In addition to my uvula being trimmed by a laser, I have three plastic tubes
resembling small Greek columns implanted into my soft palate. These columns will
cause the palate to harden, thus eliminating the collapse that causes sleep apnea. The
brochure states, most people resume normal activity and diet the same day. I am not
sure who those super humans are. The brochure does not say anything about excessive
mucous that makes swallowing an act filled with dread. To deal with the pain I am given
the typical dose of Percocet and codeine. I take the pills and wait. Nothing happens. I
begin to do some breathing exercises learned from my martial arts training, but the Tao is
on the dark side of the moon and is indifferent today. I become pain.
The experience of pain allows for the discovery of our vulnerability. It does not
allow for distraction. It forces you to face yourself at your weakest point without having
the option of retreat. I try to distract myself from the pain that pulses in my throat. I
paint, I write, I attempt to sleep. I want to leave my body, but the pain stays with me as
the drugged body stores its memory of trauma for later re-call. Pain does not allow for
forgetfulness. Every cough and swallow is a reminder that I am embodied.
When I am in pain, I do not feel that I have something called soul. Soul is a
poetic notion you have when you join with another body. I am body when alone. Pain is
a weight. It weighs down. Pain delivers us over to the passivity of the corpse pose.
Living through the pain shows the absurdity of the analytic epistemologists. They
ask: how do I know that anyone else suffers pain? How do I know that anyone knows of
my pain? The pain of others is only doubted in scholarly journals. Simply put,
knowledge cannot get a handle on pain. Noah falls off his bike and scrapes himself. To
look upon the other who is in pain, is to have knowledge of what pain does. Noah sees
the pain I am experiencing. He takes me by the hand and shows me his favorite baby
picture on the fridge. He says the picture will make my heart feel better. He teaches me
the meaning of compassion. Is this what pain teaches us? How to be more
compassionate? Given that there are multitudes in pain, compassion seems to be lacking.
Why is this the case? When someone asks you to rate your pain on a scale from 0 to 10,
the questions you should ask is how do you define 0 and 10 and what will you do about
my pain? What is to be done with pain? Is there anything we can do about it?
To capture this moment is to wipe the pain away, like rain thrown off a windshield
during a storm. Here I wonder if pain can teach us lessons in peace. To be witness to
pain is to share that pain answered with compassion can heal. How hurt can be healed
must no longer remain a medical question. It must become an ethical and political
question capable of providing real answers and active implementation rather than election
sound bites.
Holly runs through the water park without fear. She is not yet two. The water
cascades off her little body. She squeals with delight as the spray soaks her hair. She
emerges from the whales rib cage to be drenched by the bucket downpour. Along the

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way to the geyser, she slips and scrapes her knees, but this does not stop her from the
baptism of the great gush.
It is only when she stops to look at her knees, red and bloody that she crumbles
and cries for me. I tell her that she is OK. Noah comes by and tells her that she is a rough
and tumble hockey player. She gets up and plays on while I swallow more Tylenol.
In the Ethics, Spinoza returns to the knowledge provided by the body. He writes,
Man knows himself only through the affections of his body and their ideas. This is
obvious, we know things because we have a body that is alive. I think that Spinoza errs
when he links pain to impotence. He writes, Pain is mans transition from a state of
greater perfection to a state of less perfection. Pain is the realization that one is human
and animal. Pain allows us to give an account of ourselves. In giving this account, I have
come to realize that to be alive is to feel pain. Being has teeth. Life and its orifices give
both pleasure and suffering. In seeking to cancel one out, what is cancelled emerges to
assert itself.
In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche argues that we become aware of ourselves
after injuries we have inflicted. We narrate to the other what has happened to us. In
opposition to Judith Butler, I believe that one can explain, why I have emerged in this
way. My emergence is not a mystery. Pain makes me transparent. It takes what I want
to hide and makes it visible. It can be read on my face, in my posture, in the way my
body moves. In the way I speak, teach, write and sleep. Following Adorno, Butler argues,
to be human seems to mean being in a predicament that one cannot solve. Pain solves
all predicaments because it lays waste all previous definitions of what one thinks they are.
Pain is born by me. It bears me towards myself so that I am brought to the other in my
frailty and vulnerability. Paul Celan writes: Die Welt is fort, ich muss dich tragen.
--Where the world disappears I must carry you. It is within carrying and bearing, caring
and burying that what we are reveals itself beyond the confines of mere flesh and its
electric nerves always searching for some distant relief.