Complex Numbers

Surgery

9. I'm not sure which of 7 or 8 hurt more, but I wouldn't want to repeat either.

I admit it - I'm a weenie when it comes to pain. I don't like it. I don't think it builds character (though it may reveal it, partially), and I don't think there's any honor in bearing it stoically. No, I'd rather bear pleasure stoically.

It is, of course, unlikely in the extreme that I would ever have to get another appendectomy. That doesn't mean I'd never be faced with abdominal surgery, of course. I'm fairly sure that the abdominal surgery complicated my back pain, because it messed up muscles that normally serve in adjunct to the back muscles. Thus, I don't want abdominal surgery.

It goes without saying that I don't want any more needles near my eye. Hell, I can't even wear contact lenses, I'm so freaked out by the idea of something touching my eyeball. Fortunately, I've always had decent vision, and haven't needed lenses or glasses - until the past three or four years, when 25 years of staring into a computer screen most of the day finally caught up with me.

Surgery is supposed to result in a brief period of pain that substitutes for a longer-term problem, but someone would have to convince me that the pain of the problem will exceed the pain of the surgery and recovery.

Incidentally, pain is not the reason I won't get a tattoo. The reason for that is that I want the freedom, always, to change.

That said, you know what would make me change my mind about surgery? Well, imagine a drug that, whenever your nerves started to register pain, rerouted the sensation to a different part of your nervous system; specifically, the part of your brain that registers pleasure. This would be better than morphine, more addictive than hydrocodone, and more dangerous than a tomb full of asps.

Because, see, a drug like that would get out on the black market. People would take it, and they'd register all their pain as pleasure.

But pain is the body's way of telling you that you're doing something wrong.

But such a drug would make a great science-fiction plot feature.

I see any of you using it, and I'm coming after you.