Pain

It would come and go but today he could feel it, a dull ache that started in his lower back and crept through to his groin.  It was a pain that he’d known for a long time.  It was like a colleague at work that he’d passed by many times in the corridor without getting to meet but now they seemed to be drawing ever closer and closer together, their lives were becoming entwined.  The pain was something else once but now it was his pain, coming and going, weaving in and out of his life, becoming a part of him.

Most of the time it was just there, a feint hum in his lower body, a hint of pain, a mild and almost pleasant feeling, even a warm glow like the start of a tooth ache that you prod with your finger to try and feel its source. Most of the time it was just a reminder, a gentle nudge telling him that it was still there, murmuring and grumbling.  But then at other times it was a crippling agonising stabbing pain that twisted and contorted his body, a pain that gripped him and folded him in two, a pain from which there was no relief and no comfort.  Then the pain was no friend, no acquaintance, no mild irritation to be ignored or tolerated, it was an enemy, a fiend, a foe to stand up to and battle against with pills and potions and remedies.  When it was in that mood, that bad and viscous and violent mood, he would bite his lip and screw up his face while pressing his left hand to his side, willing the pain to draw out of his flesh through his fingers and he would get up and walk around like a caged animal.

But today it was only a dull and gentle ache.  It was nothing, nothing more than a pebble, a calculus, a crystalline structure born and raised deep in his kidney, a concretion that had shattered into smaller parts which had wandered towards his bladder, trying to make their escape.  It was a tiny speck of dust trapped in a kink, a rock in the stream disturbing the flow.  It was an anomaly, a malfunction, a break down, a glitch and a failure in the system.

Today it was benign, dormant and belying its true intentions but it was there, an old acquaintance and a constant reminder that he was getting old.