Pride And Grim Determination

It’s incredibly bad when a headache lifts,
creating false joy, just to descend again
when the hapless sufferers submerge
themselves in happy activity, just to feel
the swelling becoming twice as bad than
before, to find it more impossible to
concentrate, finding nothing in the outside
world can stir their passions because the
physical discomfort is too big to allow any
other sentiment than pride and grim de-
termination to present a positive face to
the world; to escape the melodramatic
sympathy of too-gentle folks who always
exclaim ‘Shame!’ when hearing about the
sufferers’ plight, then recount their own
medical history of successful treatment,
making it clear that you are a fool for not
having visited the same specialist – I’ve
followed the specialists and treatments
of other Know-It-Alls before and they were
all unqualified disasters, so please keep
your history to yourself and let me suffer in
peace, let me treasure my negative core of
discomfort in relative ease…