Well Happy New Year all you walking people, with your legs. I’m sorry, perhaps my frustration shows. I did my knee on New Year’s, thanks to wild and frenzied dancing at Roisin Dubh. Someone’s frenzied dancing knocked a drink over, I ambled past and slipped on that.
It’s funny how you know, even before you hit the ground, that it’s injury time. “This,” you say to yourself as you start to descend, “will not end well.” Something to do with the angle. And the wrenching. And the popping.
It was painful for a while, but now it only looks painful. And oddly, something like Van Goch’s Irises. I’ve made good progress, though it did mean being confined to bed for a couple of days. OK, there are worse places to be confined. All other places. And I was very fortunate to have a friend staying, who could mop my brow and bring soup and generally indulge me. But then spoiling someone is actually very nurturing. If your GP gave you a medically unnecessary backrub now and again, maybe a scatter of gentle kisses, far fewer people would need alternative therapies.
Healing is not something a doctor does to your passive body like a kind of mechanic, but it’s not a thing the body can entirely do for itself either. Medicine is a social interaction, between your body and the community it belongs to. Those around you influence your health in countless ways, from pooling their resources to care for you, to simply making you feel cared about.
Few things are more conducive to health and happiness than the assurance that you matter to other people. Why does fake medicine work so often? Because it makes you feel like someone actually wants you to get better. That’s why it’s called the placebo effect, meaning “I’ll please”, not the “take this pill and go away now you walking talking irritation” effect.
