Personal Injuries (Was Re: [UA] Secret Wound Point system)

[Timothy Toner]

>I now invite other list members to contribute their own personal injuries
> for use in UA.

Oh, Lord.  This one's gonna come back to haunt me.

Okay, I was a weird kid.  I was acutely aware that I was forever sick, with
frequent visits to the emergency room and numerous iron shots / iron pills.
And blood.  Lots and lots of blood.  But I was immortal, in that way that
only a kid can be.  I was forbidden to go trick or treating on Halloween,
and got my vengeance by climbing atop the dining room table where the candy
was being checked (rzaorblades and whatnot).  I had 8 older brothers, so
there was a shitload of candy..  I stuffed my pockets full, and wandered
over to where I had left the chair that I had used to climb up, but it had
been removed by someone setting the table.  I was three, and the tabletop
was a good four feet high.  So I decided that if Superman could do it, so
could I.  Gravity, they say, is a harsh mistress.  I hit the ground and
broke my left arm in two places.  The odd thing was that I was more
disappointed than in agony.

I say the above to give you a little perspective on my weirdness.  At some
point, after all that, I decided that I was an angel, sent by God, to keep
my family in line.  No shit.  After all, I was supposed to die, and I never
did.  So one night, I went to my parents' bedroom to ask for a drink of
water (passing the bathroom on the way, but it's better when Mom gets it).
In the dark, my toe connected with the steel bedframe, and I let out a
scream that took a few years off my parents' lives.  I was in so-much-pain,
but somehow it was worse than that, because that pain confirmed the horrid
truth.  I was human.  I was mortal.  I would really die, and it wouldn't be
some gentle candle-flame nonsense.  So when I was four, I actually felt
existential pain.  Take that, Martians!

SInce then, I've had run-of-the-mill pains.  The worst had to be getting a
needle stuck in my foot when I was six that thoroughly embedded itself
within the foot so that, from all appearances, it looked like it had been
pulled out somehow.  No one believed me that it was still in there, until
the needle lanced a nerve and numbed my entire leg.  Once again, none of
that was particularly frightening.  What _was,_ however, was waking on the
operating table mid-proceedure.  I heard, "My God, he's awake!" and then
they slapped the mask back on my face with slightly less decorum than they
had used to put it on initially.

What I do want to share with you, though, is something that falls in the
realm of weird sensation.  It wasn't pain in the classic sense, but it
caused me no less worry.  For a while, I was being medicated with Zoloft,
and it just wasn't working.  The doctor decided to put me on something new,
and told me to step down off the dosage of Zoloft. One pill for the next two
days, a half pill for the next two, and then none.  The newer drug was to
cause no interaction, so I started taking that full strength.

Around the third day after I had stopped taking Zoloft, I felt the oddest
feeling in my extremities.  It felt like someone was "jangling" the nerves.
It was that 'bad' sensation you get when you're trying to wake a numbed
limb, and you think to yourself, "maybe it should stay numbed."  Now,
however, it was only getting worse.  The sensatiion would fade from my hadn,
and shift to my shoulder.  There it would linger, then move to the small of
my back.  The total area spread.  A  day after that, it got bad.  I stepped
off the curb into the street, and it was as if my nervous system wanted to
keep going down, down, down.  Imagine that chill running down your spine.
Now imagine that sensation through your entire body, from tips of toes to
individual hair follicles.  I was one great goosebump.

I wanted to stop taking the new pill, but I also wanted to give it a chance.
At first the Zoloft was a chore, but I had gotten used to it.  It was a
matter of time.  It was only after searching for a little more information
online (remember, my doctor had told me NOTHING about these side-effects) th
at I came across Zoloft withdrawl, with a perfect description of what I was
going through.  Zoloft assists with the interconnections of synapses,
allowing them to return to their 'ready' state more quickly.  I was feeling
the effect of each synapse being starved for what had become a way of life.
In those few days, I sensed my nervous system as an individual part of a
greater whole. It is a feeling I will never forget.




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