POSTCARD #253: Chiang Mai: A short flight to Bangkok to see the needle man for the last attempt to anesthetize the head pain I’ve had for more than a year. Back to Chiang Mai the same day and it feels like it never happened, except for the pain where the needle went in – the scritch-scritch sound when needle point scratched the skull. I’m thinking maybe the pain is gone, walking through a small shopping area the next day, then I’m hit with three distinct stabs in the head. Knees bend, I want to lie down on the ground as if it were a soft bed… it would be so comfortable. No, no I need to find a place to sit. Suddenly a coffee shop appears with tables out in the street, waitress coming over as I sit. I ask for a bottle of water (waitress seems distracted, am I looking weird?), try to look normal while pushing out the capsules from their crackly celluloid enclosures, but what’s normal? It’s at times like these you notice the construct out of context.
Here I am, stabbed in the head and trying to act normal to everyone else in the street. I want to shout out ‘help me!’ but I go with the act. I can knowingly disappear in what is assumed to be the correct reality – an imaginary character in a fictional landscape. Everywhere we look the construct is staring back at us, as clear as clear can be… product marketing intrudes easily, interwoven and embedded for better or worse. And, like something direct from the mother ship itself, “the news” is inside our heads, a filter through which we see our world. The push-and-pull, towards or away from the things I love and hate, or love to hate.
I drink water, the trauma of head pain easing. People here don’t speak, hang out in postures of contemplation with devices, phones, the reflected glow of screens illuminate faces of the user. Maya is a beguiling concealment, agreeable enslavement. Heads tucked in, body crouched over in fetal position… absorption. Then, when it’s time to go, removing oneself from the enchantment, thinking how am I seen? How do I look to my ‘friends’, to all of us; I, you, he, she or it – we, you they? “Me’ as an individual… the world as my duality.
Next thing for me is an appointment to see the nerve-ablation lady 7th March. I expect the witchy neurologists will give me a hard time if I turn this down: radiofrequency ablation procedure (they stick an electric needle in and zap the nerve). Well, putting up with their negative attitude is better than getting zapped. Also, I’ve heard, the nerve grows back after the ablation, or the pain moves somewhere else. What then? Another one of these zap! ablations? zap! And does this zap! go on at intervals zap! for the remaining 10 good years of my life? I’m pretty sure I’ll say thanks but I’ll just see how it goes, go play with your procedures somewhere else, they say neuropathic pain gets more manageable as the years go by….
“The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move…” [Pema Chödrön]
dhamma footsteps 
Have you looked into turmeric? It has been very effective in reducing the effects of my post-operation epilepsy.
Do you apply it to the skin?
No add half a teaspoon and some ground black pepper (this acts as a powerful catalyst – http://www.naturalremediescures.com/2008/06/benefits-of-curcumin-turmeric-enhanced-by-black-pepper/) to a cup of tea or coffee once daily. Stir and spill in order not to ensure you swallow it all. There is loads of info about turmeric in line.
I’ve been reading about it, amazing, thanks for pointing me in the direction, so much of it here…
Oops, that should read swill rather than spill. 😀
Oops-oops swig pill, pigs swill. But sounds interesting even so
😀
Found another mistake. 😳 Correct sentence:
Stir and swill in order to ensure you swallow it all.
Okay thanks I will! How could I refuse?
Oh, thank you, Ben, for elaborating! I was interested too and couldn’t quite get the gist!
I’m not surprised. Fortunately I am not always quite so erratic. 🙂
Good morning from Florida, Tiramit. First, let me say I’m sorry to hear that the head pain is still plaguing you, although Pena Chödrön’s quote really helps put it into its rightful place. That quote helped me today as someone dear to me said hurtful things stemming from cognitIve impairment. Breathe and relax, even when I feel like screaming and running away.
Hi Shielagh from Thailand where it’s evening, we’re both here and interested in the healing aspects of turmeric, thanks to Ben and it’s all included in the Buddha’s suffering. I’m definitely going to try it in a cup of coffee or tea, with the focused thought that it’s all for the good, how could it be otherwise…
From my experience it may take a while before you feel any effect.
Okay, then it’s more like including it with our daily bread…
Right. 🙂
Mate. Friggin life and suffering eh? 5th noble truth – Turmeric & Pepper.
Wishing much success.
And to you, mate.
5th noble truth? After all is said and done? A good one…
I like to think it would be: Love yourself with the flamethrower of your heart.
Thanks Jac, you too
So very sorry for this type of suffering… the overwhelming pain in public, coming out of nowhere, wanting to yell for help. And the need to present a normal front at all costs, but why? The front in itself takes its toll energetically. So sorry, Tiramit. Thanks for the Pema Chadron quote… had special meaning for me right now. And thank you, Ben Naga, for the Turmeric cure. Will look it up. Have been looking for a method other than in milk though that is supposed to be so good. Not a milk person.
The pain is sudden like that when I stop taking the meds in order to see if the nerve block via the needle is effective, then waiting for a day afterwards without meds. It’s a lonely experience to be suddenly sick in a country that’s not your own. Okay now…
I don’t know if this would help, but i’ve been taking Serrapeptase for arthritis pain… and it sure helps a lot. Unlike nasty prescription pain relievers, it has no significant side effects. Doctors Best is a good brand, which i get from Amazon. It does have some blood thinning potential. It must be taken on an empty stomach.
I take 40,000 iu 3 or 4 times a day. Super stuff! 🙂 And it stops snoring at night!
Here some info regarding it with headache pain:
http://www.serrapeptase-info.co.uk/pain-relief/serrapeptase-for-headaches-and-migraines/
Thanks Tom and thanks too for your suggested remedies in the past, I have to get these when I’m in Europe because getting medical or health products through Amazon in Thailand is not permitted. In India Amazon is just starting and security re purchasing and the quality of the product unreliable. I’m going there in May, let’s see if I can plan things to get Serrapeptase
Yes, glad to help some.
The Doctor’s Best Serrapeptase that i take are 40,000 SPU… not 40,000 IU. My wife takes it too! 🙂
Doctor’s Best Serrapeptase can also be purchased on eBay and from other sources.
Thanks for your suggestion, I can ask my sister to order it.
I am so sorry to read that you are still suffering with these head aches. I worry how I look in public when I have one of my coughing attacks. People shy away as if I have some contagious disease. Or they offer me water or cough drops. Is it concern for the people around us feeling under comfortable or is it our embarrassment why we are concern? I hope you find relief soon.
Hi Kimberly
Thanks for these kind words. I can imagine how it would be for me seeing someone coughing and obviously ill in a public place. I’d try to help, but I think others who hurry past are in fear of catching a disease in the mind, also fear of how tenuous our life is, not the forever thing we think it is.
T
Sorry you’re still suffering, tiramit… ‘the construct’ puts me in mind of the closing sequence of ‘Chinatown’… Hope the turmeric works for you…
🙂 Just watched a clip of the ending, “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown”… yep, something like that, it’s not going to be anything else other than what it is.
‘It is what it is’ as a friend once said… and the way the ‘bodies’ almost zombie like move in to ‘swallow’ the scene and ‘Jake’s’ dumbfoundedness… 🙂
I’ve often wondered where I am, stuck in Chinatown 30 years…
‘Chinatown’, unfortunately, is a world wide phenomenon… and we’ve all got to be ‘stuck’ somewhere…
Absolutely, yes I get a bit isolated here. Thanks for this reminder…
If I could truly take that Pema Chodron quote to heart, how very different my life would be… the feeling of guilt over a perceived wrongdoing coupled with a desperate cover-up in order to appear “normal” despite the suffering seems an incalculable waste of energy. I really feel for you in this unfortunate situation, and I hope that the pain indeed becomes bearable with the passage of time. I can’t help thinking that one has a bit of latitude to appear other than normal while experiencing stabbing head pain… More and more, I sense that no one can see me, as distracted as they all are with their precious Devices… Oddly lonely in public these days…
Hi JW, thanks for these kind words. About that guilt thing, I’ve spoken with some Western Monks again and again and they all agree we just have to live with it, part of our conditioning, a characteristic of (misunderstood) Christian religiosity. As soon as it’s understood and seen through, it’s gone. For me it leaps up again at the first opportunity, then I reason with it and it’s gone again. This is the kind of thing that comes to the surface if you’re an introspective person, practicing meditation, looking for the Truth in a battleground of untruths 😉 The surroundings may be populated by people only half awake, glued to their devices, unable to be by themselves without anything. Really all that’s needed is to have and to nurture functioning mindful awareness…
The doc put me on some different medication and I see right away that there are some changes. I’m not the prisoner I thought I was. I’m in a more optimistic frame of mind…
I’m so sorry for your troubles. I hope you find relief soon.
Thanks for these kind words, I went to see the anesthesiologist and she gave me some new meds. Things have improved since then…