What’s your pain discount rate?

The power of self improvement

I posted the above from an ER while on a business trip years ago. The pain was white. Electric.

Poked and prodded

I love Persian accents. They’re unique and pleasant to the ear (at least for me). Hard to replicate.

I was at the doctor’s yesterday. Young guy. Friendly. Persian.

Four needles were staring back at me. Waiting patiently to fulfill their destinies.

“How do you handle these?” he asks.

“Generally you put the tube between your index and middle fingers and push the plunger with your thumb.”

I didn’t say that. “No problem,” I answered. “Been poked and prodded a bunch in the military. Only had one near pass-out out of hundreds I guess.” I still give my vasovagal nerve and intermittent fasting shit for whatever role they played in that smirch on my otherwise pretty good tough-guy record.

Usually I like to watch the average shot or blood draw as a kind of man test. I even watched my vasectomy. But this day I was supine, not just because I like that word but because laying down was part of this procedure’s SOP.

So I couldn’t see the first thin soldier coming. I felt a twinge of pain. This was no blood draw.

I continued the conversation. “Hopefully I have many more pokes behind me than ahead of…