Pain – A Poem
Copyright 2008
Ashley Davidoff MD
You came with no warning and no invitation
You came with a single message of doom and gloom
I had no control
It was fate
It was no joke
I had to take you seriously
You seem to be endless and to be going nowhere
With the unintended intention to taunt and haunt me
The source of my suffering
Since the dawn of man
You have accompanied us with a not so gentle reminder
That everything is not OK
Some say you are protective
But it is sometimes hard to understand
All I know is that I suffer
Nociceptors sense the feeling
They come in different forms
Trnasmitting pain from pressure, prick, or improper heat,
– or a severe lack of it
Quickly the sensation travels
On the A delta or C train-
Impulses that run their course
From source to spinal cord
With sizzling hot news of my experience
Where they snap to a halt as they clap as a synapse
And get a second order of direction
At the gate of decision
Which waves them on to a new thoughtless action
On their way to master control.
And through and via the wire of the RAS
Which awakens an awareness of you;
And then to the thalamic relay
Where they get their new orders:
To whom they should turn
And what direction to take.
In the higher levels of limbic autonomic and homunculus centers
The sense becomes real
And the feeling becomes severe
And after all the science
I know not what to do
But to increase my heart rate a little,
Contract a muscle and a gland or two
And perhaps let out a scream at the height –
And impugn your intrusive impudence that imposes on me
And then sometimes
We use the eyes and guise
Of X-ray Eyes
Or try a tincture of opiate
To extirpate the excruciate –
And then sometimes to no avail
Yet I could care less about your wonderful pathways of biology and science
I know that I hurt -but in a different way
It is not that pain that I feel
But the pain of fate
That was handed to me as a card in a bad deal of nature
And I have no choice but to deal with it …..
But it hurts!