I cried at Pity -- not at Pain

There's a lot of vague concern. Worries. Anxieties. And then there's chronic pain. My parents share 60 years of combined experience in medical profession among themselves and I find them helpless before the pain. No combination of drugs, not even the scary Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatics, could resolve Ammi's arthritis. It's not acute; not stabbing or gripping she says. Just thumping. Alive. Living. Inside her. Living. On her. To think of that alone, is sad enough. But on top of that, the fact that contemporary medicine is failing right in front of me is painful. Pitiful. Especially when I'm foraying into it myself. Huh! The 'triumph of anatomy, physiology and pathology'! So much for that!

We are being trained in modern day medicine where there's a heavy accent on treating patients by specialists. Treating aimed at underlying causes. Drugs targeting infections. But right at home, there's this dolores vagi, qui nomen a sede fixa non habent (wandering pains, that do not take a name from a fixed site). Lassitude. Stupor. Malaise. Ache. Soreness. Pain.

The kind of pain that's not a mere symptom. Rather a disease in itself.