Stop When It Hurts
Not-so-simple advice for living
Just as casually as someone stabbed toothpicks into a tray of cheese cubes, Dr. Jim chatted away, narrating his work, while inserting acupuncture needles along my bladder meridian.
I wasn’t opposed to hearing how my qi was greatly imbalanced or how I was dragging around a lot of extra yin energy. But I wanted to think about something other than all the needles entering my body.
Dr. Jim, who I see for both his acupuncture and chiropractic services, is the only person in my life who seems to look forward to hearing what’s wrong with me. He’s studied Eastern and Western medicine and addresses my complaints like a contestant on Jeopardy who can’t wait to be called on. He’s quick to tell me why my (insert body part) hurts and three things I should do (or stop doing) to make it feel better.
So, as a means of distracting us both, I told him about my hamstring. It had been throbbing for a couple of days and was more painful than usual during my run that morning. “I’ve even been rolling, stretching, and icing it like you told me,” I threw in, as if I could turn this into his problem, not mine.
“So, did you stop?” he asked.
“Stop what?”
“Stop running.”
Why would I stop in the middle of a run?
This confused me. “No. I mean, after about a mile and a half, the pain started to fade, so…”
Only someone who has parented teenagers could recognize the very soft but very deep sigh he let out right then.
“Is it hurting now?” His voice was still kind. Oh, the restraint.
“Um, yeah. A lot, actually.”
Perhaps my distraction plan backfired because seconds later, he was inserting even more needles into me — these into the back of my thigh — attaching electrodes to them, and then dialing up the frequency and intensity of the stimulation until I was just on the wrong side of comfortable, which, apparently, is exactly how it’s supposed to be to get the old qi flowing.
Once all the needles were in place and my hamstring was pinging like a cell tower outside a Taylor Swift concert, Dr. Jim turned on the heat lamp, started his calm-vibes playlist, and left me and my qi alone for thirty minutes.
“How’s the hamstring?” he asked. I was now needle-free and fully dressed, bundling up to head out into the cold.
“Much better,” I said.
“Good, that’s what I want to hear. Now, please rest it for a bit.”
“What do you mean—like, no running? For how long?” I run five days a week. I do it to try to stay physically healthy, but if I don’t get my run in, my mental health takes the biggest hit. Even the idea of skipping a run makes me nervous.
“Until it’s not hurting anymore.”
“But—. I mean, some pain is fine, right? Aren’t we supposed to just… work through it?”
Dr. Jim and I have what I like to think is a healthy practitioner-patient relationship. I give him shit because he’s constantly geeking out about how bodies work and what they need, and he gives me shit each time I doubt that he isn’t 100 percent right, which he always is.
“Look, one thing we both know about you is that you’re not to be trusted with your pain.”
He was smiling, but unlike our usual barbs, this comment stung. What did that even mean? I’m not to be trusted with my pain? What does trust have to do with anything?
“Just give it a few days,” he said. “When you start back, if it hurts when you run…stop.”
I decided not to come back with, “When does it not hurt?”
Later that night, I was making dinner, muscle memory taking me from a cutting board full of vegetables to steaming bowls of veggie fried rice, when I finally realized what bothered me so much about his comment.
Pain has always been something I feel I have to work through, not stop for. And not because I’m super tough, because that’s just how it is. Right?
In middle school gym class, painful period cramps were never bad enough to get me out of dodgeball or public humiliation on the climbing rope. “All the more reason you should exercise,” was my gym teacher’s pat reply. Granted, she probably got the cramps excuse ten times a day, but I was still just a girl, dealing with a new kind of pain for the first time in my life, and I was told to just get over it.
Looking back now, I wonder if that was just practice—you know, for the Super Bowl commercial of pain: childbirth.
Don’t tell anyone I had an epidural.
During my first pregnancy, I learned quickly that natural childbirth was the gold standard. Women have done it that way for millennia, right? I was awed by friends’ and relatives’ stories of how long they labored and the pain they overcame, naturally, of course. I believed one day, I’d join their ranks and have my own stories of fearlessness and bravery.
Well, both times I gave birth, I eventually requested an epidural. (My husband might call this an understatement.) My body welcomed the relief, but with it came embarrassment for not being strong enough to do it on my own. And in the months and years after, I was anxious around other moms telling their own stories (or husbands bragging about them), afraid I’d be asked about mine and let it slip that I hadn’t been able to handle the pain.
And what about so-called good pain?
Adulthood is sorely lacking in trophies, but that’s okay because I found another way to validate my accomplishments. Good pain. I’m grateful when it shows up because it proves that I worked hard enough in the gym, made enough progress in the yard, or scrubbed my house clean enough. So what if I wince every time I lower myself onto the toilet the next day?
And now, in middle age, when there’s a wrong way to get out of bed, a danger if I read in one position too long, or an inherent risk in not stretching before getting down on the floor with my dogs, should I still call it good pain?
Is any kind of pain actually good? If so, how am I supposed to tell the difference? Which one do I stop for? I’m never totally sure; besides, there’s no time to stop, so I just move — or hobble — on. It’s fine. I’m fine. Trust me.
Who doesn’t want to be badass?
I can now look back on a lifetime of not just ignoring but gaslighting my body’s signals. I told myself it was just a headache, only a sore throat, barely a fever, merely a strain.
Besides, I learned that when I put up with pain others could see, they’d call me a warrior, a goddess. They’d say I was fierce, fearless, badass.
I did think about Dr. Jim’s advice, gave my hamstring a break, and didn’t run for an entire week. (That’s like three months in runner years.) Instead, I hit the elliptical machine, cranking up the speed and resistance so I could break a good sweat, get my heart rate into the target zone, and close all the rings on my Apple watch.
My hamstring did stop throbbing. It just ached a bit, which is normal. Right?
Karen Scholl is a writer and recovering soccer mom living the dream in a flyover state. Her humor book Surviving Soccer: A Chill Parent’s Guide to Carpools, Calendars, Coaches, Clubs, and Corner Kicks is forthcoming from Triumph Books.
