Painful Yarns Read online

  painful yarns*

  metaphors & stories to help understand the biology of pain.

  by g. lorimer moseley

  *yarn:_yärn, noun, a tale, especially a story of adventure or incredible happenings

  To buy this book, go to any good bookshop. It would be cheaper to go to:

  www.lulu.com

  www.physiouk.co.uk - United Kingdom

  www.noigroup.com - Asia/Pacific

  This edition of painful yarns is published in 2010 by Dancing Giraffe Press.

  Copyright © 2010 Lorimer Moseley

  The right of Lorimer Moseley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act UK 1988 and the Copyright Act 1968 Australia.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, Lorimer Moseley and Dancing Giraffe Press.

  A CiP catalogue record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia:

  Moseley, G. Lorimer (Graham Lorimer) 1970-

  Painful Yarns. Metaphors & stories to help understand the biology of pain.

  Bibliography.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 9780980358803 (pbk.)

  ISBN 9780987342638 (ebk.)

  1. pain – fiction. 2. Pain – Physiological aspects – fiction. 3. Rehabilitation – Fiction. I. Title.

  A823.4

  Printed & bound in Australia by Noigroup.

  Front cover: A French bakery.

  Back cover: Pleasure or pain?

  This book should be cited as: Moseley, GL (2007) Painful yarns.

  Metaphors & stories to help understand the biology of pain. Dancing Giraffe Press. Canberra, Australia: 113 pages.

  Contents

  introduction

  nigel’s superskoda 110

  crazy kivin’s brush with death

  seeing is believing

  the thirsty idiots

  twonames & the magic button

  scratchy & the boring talker (the snake bite stories)

  mr hammerhead shark

  ant fettuccine

  dusty’s bum crack

  ornithology & amazing grace

  the hino story

  references & further reading

  post-script: call for stories

  about the author

  List of figures

  Figure 1 Lines of the same length look different

  Figure 2 The same colour illusion

  Figure 3 Snake bite version 1

  Figure 4 The nasty customer that got me

  Figure 5 Snake bite version 2

  introduction

  I decided to write this book after a great deal of lobbying from two groups of people. The first group was patients with whom I shared these stories as I tried to explain to them what we now know about the biology of pain. I love stories as a way to back up biology. I am convinced that if people in pain can understand their pain in terms of its underlying biology, it helps them cope with it and ultimately overcome it. I rely on Explain PainRef List No. 1 to present the biology, and I use stories like the ones in this book to ‘cement’ it. So this book is for people in pain.

  The second group who lobbied for this book was clinicians with whom I shared some of these stories at conferences, at seminars and at courses. I would always get asked ‘Have you written those stories down?’ Well, now I have. I have read versions of some of these stories being recounted as part of pain management program manuals. I am cool with that, but I didn’t feel right about the way the stories had become that little bit grander than they already were – I think one had me flying a helicopter while half conscious (I didn’t rush to correct it mind you – I felt a bit like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo). So, this book is for clinicians.

  I have three hopes for this book. First, I hope you find the stories as interesting and as fun as I do. Second, I hope the stories help you understand the biology of pain. Third, I hope that TMBA, Mick, JK, Frank, Heidi, Smurph, Davo, Hannu, Dimos & Tan know I really appreciate your comments and suggestions on earlier versions of painful yarns.

  Lorimer, Oxford, 2007.

  nigel’s superskoda 110

  Or: Pain is a critical protective device. Ignore it at your own peril.

  When I first left school, I got what remains the coolest job I have ever had. It was so cool, I can’t even write here where I worked, nor what exactly I did. Now that is cool. I can say, however, that Nigel Mawson worked there too.

  Nigel was the nicest of about 15 middle aged investigative coppers1. They were hard men. Nigel was a hard man too, there is no doubt about that, but he was a South Australian and sounded a bit like David Hookes. David Hookes was a cricketer2 who once told me I had a good straight drive but I needn’t try and hit the cover off the ball. That David Hookes said I had a good straight drive was enough for me, as a 14 year old, to like him. That Nigel Mawson sounded like him was enough for me, as a 19 year old, to like him.

  The other thing that was peculiar and, to me, a bit endearing, was that he had an unusual habit of referring to everyone by their full name. I was always Lorimer Moseley. Never Lorimer. Never Moseley. Always Lorimer Moseley. He also did this in the third person - “I will be taking Lorimer Moseley out with me today – there is something Lorimer Moseley ought to see”. I have always been drawn to people who adhere to a silly little habit like that, even when to do so is considered by everyone else to be undoubtedly odd. So, unlike the rest of the grim- faced, overweight, estranged-from-their-family, married-to-their- job, chain smoking, heavy drinking blokes, Nigel didn’t scare me. That is why one day I asked him for a lift home from work.

  Nigel drove a 1971 Skoda SuperSport 110. Nigel didn’t care for it, particularly. In fact, he made it clear that he refused to know anything at all about cars, simply because his brother had always been obsessed by them. Nigel said that as teenagers, his brother was as obsessed with cars as Nigel was with girls. He said:

  Nigel Mawson: My brother would want to get busy with his girl in the back of his car so he could check out how his car performed! He used to sit outside the loo while I was in there reading MAD magazines. I’d shove loo paper in ears to avoid hearing him carry on about needing to bore out3 my Datsun 180B, and that my mates were all uncool because none of them had extractors.

  Nigel’s brother had the last laugh however, by leaving Nigel the Skoda in his will.

  The Skoda SuperSport 110 was a magnificently ridiculous car. The doors didn’t shut properly. The ignition only started if the right hand indicator was on. It leaked in the rain and sounded like a kettle the very second it hit 51 mph. The most striking thing however, was not about the car. No, the most striking thing was this; before starting the car, Nigel would turn on the radio, detune it so there was nothing but static, and then turn it up to maximum volume. Only then would he start the car up.

  There was no point attempting conversation once the radio was on. One day, I asked him before we got in:

  LM: Nigel Mawson, why do you have the radio up so loud and why don’t you ever tune it? Why don’t you listen to something instead of that terrible static?

  NM: It’s not that loud Lorimer Moseley.

  LM: Oh but it is Nigel Mawson, it is.

  NM: I suppose I did think the horn was busted the other day because I couldn’t hear it over the radio. I have the radio on to get rid of a strange knocking noise this car has. I hate knocking noises.

  LM: (bemused and only vaguely interested look on face): Right

  NM: Yeah, about a month after I got the little
shitbox, a year or so ago I guess, I noticed a little tapping noise, somewhere at the front there (Nigel waved a disinterested hand toward the front of the car). It went away when I turned on the radio, so I didn’t think more about it. The radio has somethin’ wrong with it so that every time I get in here I have to turn it up again. Then the radio went completely jiggered and had basically no volume - I could hear the tapping noise something fierce in the gaps between sentences or songs. So I shifted the tuning a bit and that seemed to do the trick.

  LM: So what was- what is, the noise?

  NM: Fucked if I know. Fucked if I care.

  LM: You are a very interesting man Nigel Mawson

  NM: And you are a prying little prick Lorimer Moseley

  I learnt fairly early on to not take such insults as if they are meant to mean what they say. With Nigel, and most of the people with whom I worked, such insults were rather complimentary. Nigel was right about the noise – as soon as he started the engine up, I couldn’t hear a thing. Although I could feel it. I could feel the whole car thumping from side to side. The Skoda felt like it would break apart any minute. I must have looked a little surprised because Nigel shouted over the radio fuzz:

  NM: She’s a bit rough. Sit on your coat, stick your feet on that wine cask and wedge your arm in under that bar – that way you’ll hardly notice it.

  So, I sat on my coat, put my feet on the wine cask and wedged my arm in under the bar. It all but concealed the violence of the bump and now it just felt like we were on a flat bottom raft in choppy seas. Nigel was certainly satisfied and we drove toward my house in silence. Except the radio.

  My house was at the bottom of a dead-end street, the entrance to which had a little kerb. Typical middle class suburbia. Established gardens, kids on bicycles doing tricks over a make-shift jump made from an upturned wheel barrow and a couple of planks. Mrs Dobbinsk sitting behind a lace curtain taking notes on the comings and goings in the street. Mr Wallenstein with his German shepherd that would definitely have bitten the legs off any child who attempted to fetch the football they had just kicked over the fence. In fact, Mr Wallenstein’s German shepherd was almost as frightening as Mr Wallenstein’s hare lip. Then there was Niki Prowvik, who had lice. All the time. It was a typical Canberra middle class suburb.

  Nigel took the entry curb a little quickly and as we bumped back down there was the most enormous BANG! The bang was followed by scraping, crunching, and ripping. In what seemed like an eternity but I imagine was really a matter of less than a second, the radio stopped and the Skoda’s engine came ripping through to join us in the front seats. There was the engine, poking its head into the cabin, still running! Sitting in between us, with the radio and dashboard all bent up around it, the engine spluttered much like an old man might on a sinewy bit of lamb. Then it conked out with a last hurrah, a fizz not unlike the noise my son Henry and I make when we release the air brake on a big pretend truck. Finally a long eerie wheeze.

  Then silence.

  NM: Now there is something you don’t see every day Lorimer Moseley. Closest I’ve ever been to a car engine. Filthy things aren’t they? Do you mind walking the last bit? I don’t like to draw attention to myself.

  LM: Sure Nigel Mawson. Do you want me to call Road Service or anything?

  NM: You best not. Car’s not registered and I don’t exist.

  Nigel got his bag out of the trunk, turned around and walked up the street, leaving the Skoda SuperSport 110 smoking away at the top of my street.

  LM: See you Nigel Mawson.

  NM: See you Lorimer Moseley.

  I joined the kids in investigating it and we all agreed to pretend it had been dumped. Mrs Dobbinsk would know better but we all knew she would have to die before anyone could read her notes. When the council fellow came to take the Skoda away he couldn’t believe what he saw. The bolts that held the engine to the frame of the car were missing. In fact, everything that held the engine to the frame was missing. The noise that Nigel was trying to avoid was in fact the engine slowly coming loose. It took a year, but eventually the whole engine just fell out and the Skoda SuperSport 110 died.

  so, what does Nigel’s Skoda Supersport 110 have to do with pain?

  The one sentence take home message: Pain is a critical protective device – ignore it at your own peril.

  I like Nigel’s SuperSkoda 110 story because it shows how important it is to respect the warning signs. For Nigel, it was the noise of something going wrong under the bonnet (hood). Sure, he could do things to conceal the signs – to ‘anaesthetise’ the noise perhaps. But in the end this was not a very sensible thing to do and the cost was, well, the cost was the SuperSport 110. Not a major cost perhaps but the point is there.

  Of course, ignoring pain doesn’t always lead to destruction of the painful part alone. Check out Crazy Kivin’s experience…

  crazy kivin’s brush with death

  Or: Pain is what tells us to protect our body.

  One of the best ways to travel around Australia is to hitchhike. Granted, it is not for everyone, but it certainly was for me. A few mates and I set up an annual hitchhiking race, whereby we would all meet for breakfast and set up a staggered start.

  The agreement was that when you reached the target town, you had to get your race card stamped by the barman at a pre-designated pub. It was, therefore, a time trial. Winner got all expenses reimbursed by the other racers and then gave half of it to a charity.

  If the target town was far enough away, you would often run into each other along the way. Occasionally you would fly past another racer while they waited on the side of the road for a lift. We implemented a time-exchange program, whereby if you convinced your lift to stop for a competitor, the competitor was required to donate you 30 minutes in exchange for first dibs at the next point. Most trips were for a long weekend. The longest was from Sydney to a place called Kaniva, in country Victoria. 1165 km4. This was my best performance, and possibly the best performance by anyone hitchhiking, anywhere. Ever. It was certainly the best in the 6 year history of the Annual Hitchhiking Race for Charity5.

  As usual, we met for breakfast at Badde Manors, a reasonably grungy café on St John’s Road in Glebe, inner western suburbs of Sydney. Later we shifted to Digi.Kaf, the first cyber café in town, which would end up hosting me while I wrote up my doctoral thesis. They (well, Susie really – I am not sure if Paul, the owner, ever knew about it) kept me well stocked with very good coffee and panini and soups and little treats. “All for the progress of science” Susie would say. Anyway, on the Kaniva trip, we left Badde Manors in staggered fashion between 9.40 and 11.20. There were six of us. I was last.

  It was tricky, as always, to get out of Sydney. Technically, we were permitted to take a bus, but it cost 30 minutes per dollar, which is pretty expensive, so no-one really did.

  Trains and taxis were banned. Usually, the best plan was to head down to one of the main distributors that headed out of town and to stick a sign up. A few of the boys made their first sign over breakfast and our endeavours became the talk of the café. My signs were always a bit more melodramatic than the others. For example, Dicko might write a sign like this:

  Whereas I would write a sign like this:

  On the back of the signs, I always wrote a pleasant farewell, because I think everyone who considers stopping for a hitchhiker but doesn’t stop for them – you know - takes their foot off the throttle a bit but goes on anyway – has a look in the rear-view mirror to confirm the wisdom of their choice. So, I wrote this on the back:

  The flipside message got me at least one lift. That was in wheat country in western NSW. A farmer reversed about 400 metres to pick me up after reading:

  As it turned out, the Kaniva trip didn’t need a sign. I packed up our plates and took them into the kitchen, had a final chat to the cook, whose kiddies I was babysitting the following Friday, and picked up my bag. I was just about to step out and stroll down to the eastern distributor when a fellow on the opposite side o
f the café remarked:

  “Did I hear thet you are going to Kaniva?”

  I responded in the affirmative and then got a barrage of questions:

  “Why?”

  LM: Hitchhiking race

  Why?

  LM: Fun, primarily, and we raise money for MissionBeat or Salvo’s or someone like that

  Kun yer talk?

  LM: Yes

  Are yer posh?

  LM: I don’t reckon. What do you reckon Cook? Am I posh?

  Cook: About as posh as my Rottweiler

  Kun yer drive?

  LM: Yes

  I’ll take yer thun

  LM (a little Uncomfortable): Sorry?

  I’ll take yer thun. Kaniva. I’m huddin to Lullumur. Nuxt town along. Be good to huv company. Uvin uf you are un Aussie.

  So there it was. A lift. From start to finish. And that is how I met Crazy Kivin. Kevin was his real name but he was a Kiwi and I can’t help talking like a Kiwi whenever I spend time with Kiwi’s (you may have picked this up already). Crazy Kiv drove a reasonably old Mazda ute6. Two seats, flat tray. He was parked (illegally) right at the front door of Badde Manors. We got in and started chatting. He was a most intriguing fellow. He was heading to Lillimur to meet a Bull Mastif that he was thinking about buying. His ute was small and the engine worked hard, especially when we got out of Sydney into the glorious southern tablelands.

  Crazy and I rattled past the Dog on the Tuckerbox just outside of Gundagai, and turned off the main drag, onto the Sturt Highway and towards Wagga Wagga. That was about 5 hours in. The ute was low on fuel so we stopped in at Wagga7, which is when Crazy asked me to drive.

  We were not back on the highway for more than a few minutes when the exclamation mark light came on. I have always loved the exclamation mark light. It is completely uninformative except to say “something is wrong somewhere, but I’m not going to tell you exactly where”. Crazy’s ute was manufactured when cars were just getting fitted with little computers that would tell you stuff about the car. More information than the usual temperature, oil and brake lights on the dash. The computers were sophisticated enough to tell you something was wrong, but you had to find out yourself what exactly it was (bit like psychotherapy I guess). I mentioned the recently illuminated light to Crazy –