Getting worse?

 It seems that my incidents of phantom pain are getting more intense, lasting longer, and happening more frequently. It's a horrible kind of pain because there's no reason for it; it's all mental. But even though it's all mental, it feels as real as any other pain. I'm five hours into an intense episode of it now.

   On the other hand, it's not like any other pain. If you asked me to replicate it, I'd have no way of doing so. Scalding water? No. An electric shock? Closer, sometimes, but still no. Deprived blood flow? A broken bone? A hard slap? No, no, and no. 

   Pressure therapy helps a little. What that means is that when a phantom pain hits my non-existent right leg, I grind a knuckle into the corresponding part of my left leg. Using pain to stop pain. It stops it alright, but only for a little while. You have to keep on top of it, like the pain is a rat in a burning room with one hole to escape though and you can push it back but it will try again, sometimes for just a few hours, sometimes for an entire day.

   Christmas, the day I'm writing this on in 2024, is not special to me. What cards I send say Season's Greetings and are more about celebrating the end of the year. Still, there's a little part of me that thought this morning at ten, when the current attack began, "Aw, come on. It's Christmas!"

Today's old Loser

This is someone else in a photo from the 1930s

What's making the Complete and Total Loser feel old today is this item from the daily almanac he gets online:
On this date in 1977, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant and a convicted murderer, became the last person in France executed with the guillotine. 
Imagine, a country like France, civilized Europeans who make good movies and went halfsies on a supersonic passenger plane, cutting a guy's head off as if it were the 18th century. Granted, he had raped, tortured and murdered his 21-year-old girlfriend and was well deserving of severe punishment. But still.

Hamida Djandoubi

At the time, the Loser was in his first year of college, taking courses that would never lead to a decent job that he liked. Really, they might as well have cut his head off.