Pain

I'm in pain. Not just the ongoing emotional pain that I have endured for the past 28 weeks and is gradually increasing. Mainly because my physical discomfort is getting worse.

Many years ago I developed this weird little twitch in one of the muscles over the ribcage on my left side. It was not painful, just an annoyance that would routinely catch me off guard as I went about my day. As the twitch developed during the same time frame as my asthma, my doctor ordered an echo cardiogram along with several standard diagnostic tests for asthma, to rule out any issues with my heart.*

No heart issues. Just a twitch from the electrical impulses in the muscles going haywire. He offered to write a script for muscle relaxants and a painkiller, which I turned down because the twitching was neither often enough to warrant a muscle relaxant nor painful enough to warrant prescription drugs.

The twitch has evolved, must likely because of the expansion in the rib cage, into a constant, burning spasm that has driven my already depressed self into even more despair. Forgoing the bra is not an option (and didn't work). Wireless does not work. And sleeping in any other position other than on my back (which I'm not supposed to do) makes the pain worse, especially when I roll over and am awakened from a dead sleep by the searing burning sensation.

Other things that have not helped in recent weeks – the constant gloom and doom of my mother, who can not help herself from uttering at least once during every conversation that I might end up having a cesarean section. As if I exist on planet la-la land, where pregnancy complications never happen and every birth is done vaginally, without painkillers and produces powerful orgasms that instantaneously wipe out the memory of the pain of labor.

The edema is not encouraging either. I was prepared for foot and ankle swelling. I went out and purchased two pairs of shoes, a pair of Sanita clogs in blue faux snakeskin and a pair of Wolky Stage wedges in red patent leather, because I knew I would need room in my shoes for my feet. The shoes were embarrassingly and almost prohibitively expensive, a sum of money that I should be saving instead of dropping on shoes.

But the shoes work. They work so well that I don't notice when my feet are swelling until after I have removed the shoes and seen my toes nearly disappear into each other. The first time this happened was Friday night. My shrieks of horror provoked first concern, then annoyance in J, who offered the following solution to my problem: “don't look at them”.

There has been some hilarity. Men especially seem to like the clogs and I've collected quite a few compliments on their style in the week I have been wearing them. The highlight of this past week was the clerk at a local used media store, with whom I shared the following exchange:

Clerk: Nice shoes. Great color.
Me: Thanks. I'm not going to be able to see my feet in another month, so I decided to go with something a little bit obnoxious.
Clerk: (long pause) Won't be able to see your feet?
Me: I'm pregnant.
Clerk: (with relief) Oh. I thought you were going to have them amputated or something. Is that real snakeskin?

It is a better story in the telling then in print...

*This is probably an example of the type of testing overkill the right claims is driving up insurance costs. The doctor who ordered the tests was a personal friend of my both parents, had worked with both of them for years and was an excellent and instinctive diagnostician who knew in the office that I probably had asthma. Nonetheless he was not going to be on the hook to explain to my parents why he missed a potentially fatal heart defect.