Pain Clinic…. Day Six.

Please shoot me now.    😐

Is it not bad enough that I suffer daily with chronic and unabated back pain?  What on earth have I done to deserve being lumped into this program with these utter morons?  I know it’s not polite or politically correct to walk into a room and within half an hour make a judgment call that you’re surrounded by persons of lower intellect and lesser education…. but it happens and I think everyone does to some degree or other…. whether it be a conscious process or not, when we enter a new environment we tend to process pretty quickly who is around us and where we sit in the pecking order. 

In this pain clinic situation we’re supposedly all experiencing similar issues with chronic pain and therefore proceeding towards a common goal – to help us adjust to injury and learn to cope with the limitations that chronic pain causes.   But that is where the similarities end.  Our little group of 7 couldn’t be more diverse if we tried and I find myself in a position where I do not connect with any of them.  We (humans of independently thought) tend to rapidly assess what we have to gain from those around us as well as what we have to offer in any social group.  We work out who we might be able to learn from ?  who we might be wish to socialize with?  who shares a similar sense of humour to ourselves?  But we also pretty quickly make some less socially acceptable judgments as well – whose opinions carries more weight? Whether that is due to a persons qualifications or something as non-politically correct as someone’s educational or socioeconomic background is irrelevant.   We know instinctively who is more likely to act aggressively if challenged?  Who would be easily browbeaten in a debate?  Who are the haves and the have nots in the stakes of  in education or intelligence?  social standing?  common sense?  physical fitness?  wealth?  and a tonne of other things.

We make snap judgments about new people all the time.  Some of those judgments will serve us well, and others will be either happily or unhappily dispelled in due course.  I’ve been with this group of individuals for three weeks now, and my initial opinions of them haven’t altered one iota… either because my initial impressions were unusually perceptive in the beginning or because none of them have shown me anything on closer acquaintance to alter those early conclusions.  Probably a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B.  What I am certain of is this – I have nothing in common with any of them other than our joint ability to empathize with one another’s physical chronic pain condition….. and I’ve had enough of making polite with them thank you very much.

Uncle Frank has a handful of well trolled out anecdotes for every occasion – some of which I’ve heard as many as four times in less than three weeks.   Tracey Shoulders was palpably giving off a ‘I don’t want to be here’ vibe initially, and in the very first session of the first day was combattive, disruptive and argumentative – this has continued daily and in my opinion has been rather detrimental towards us gaining the most out of the curriculum.  The two of them delight in making fart jokes at one another, disrupting the group and have developed a very irritating conversational style which involves one talking over the top of the other in increasing volume until neither are comprehensible and no one can get a word in edgewise.  Alan Everything is having a hard time without his support network around him (his family are back in the Bay) and because he’s feeling a bit down he’s decided he just won’t try anymore and isn’t participating in many of the sessions.  Absent Peter is just as lackadaisical as before if not more so.  Brent Neck has latched onto one or two things that the Dr said to him last week and has been harping on and on and on about how unfairly done by he is – and it turns out he literally can’t read and that ‘I dunno’ act he was pulling on the first few days wasn’t an act at all. 

I have put most of them offside by now by politely requesting that we get back on topic during discussions and I do believe I may solidified a general prejudice towards me this afternoon when Tracey said to me “I just farted (twitter, twitter, twitter) can you smell it?”  to which I stared at her blankly and replied in decidedly unamused tone “Ask me one on Art History.” and walked away.

Three days remaining…. inhale… exhale.

PS – Happy Birthday Mum.
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