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shadows-taller · 6 years

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bucky, 41, getting together story💘

this took way too long and I have no excuse. also it’s super long and I got carried away. whoops. usually I don’t like using the whole y/n thing but I feel it was unavoidable here. anyway. I hope you enjoy!

“I know it’s 2am but can we meet up”

The absolute best thing about getting a text from a wrong number is the sheer fun you can have fucking with the person who texted you. For example, Wanda got a wrong number one time detailing how her child was a disruption to this woman’s daughter and how she was no longer invited to this family’s barbecue. For a solid four days she pretended to be this kid’s mother, and it only ended when the soccer mom threatened to call the cops. To date, that’s your best wrong number story, and to be fair, it isn’t even yours.

You haven’t had much luck as far as messing with strangers, your first and only attempt being the incident at the Apple Store in Times Square when you were drunk. Needless to say, you haven’t gone back to the area in a long time.

Ever since moving to New York, you’ve learned that the people are friendly when you get to know them and treat them like people rather than tourist attractions. You might even call yourself one, on occasion - god knows your whole family back home thinks you’re some sort of socialite now that you’re in the big city.

Most of the time, you’re just lucky if you go out to lunch with Wanda or Val once a week. That and the debate club you frequent once a month, held at a bookstore a few blocks down from your street. The only interaction you have with men is in class and the guy who works at the bookstore on weekends. He’s seen you at your worst, from the morning to get a book for class and in the evening when you just finished a part of a series and need to find out what happens next. And dressed in pajamas in both situations. No way will you strike up conversation with him anytime soon, that’s way too embarrassing.

All this to say, school doesn’t make for much wiggle room in your schedule. And your social skills have become a bit lacking thanks to this fact

Luckily, today, a Saturday, has left you enough time not only to get ahead on your studies, but also to get lunch with Wanda, go to the library and the small museum in your neighborhood (because you’ve always wanted to but, again, time is a cruel mistress), and be back home with enough daylight left to make a decent meal for yourself.

Of course, some fucker has to text you in the middle of the night with some bullshit like;

Unknown: i know its 2am but can we meet up

You hear the buzz on your nightstand, wake up enough to reach over and turn your phone on, and type out a response as well as your still mostly-asleep brain can.

You: who’s this?

Prepared to fall back asleep, your head has barely hit the pillow when your phone buzzes again. And then a second time, to add insult to injury.

Unknown: james, from ur anthro class?

Unknown: ur my partner for the project

Groaning, you sit up and prop a pillow behind you. Reaching for your glasses, you prepare to let the guy down, too tired to mess with him. But just as you’re typing out a sorry, wrong #, he messages you for a third time in a row.

Unknown: u know, with Banner? The man who cant answer questions for shit

Now that makes you wake up a bit. Not only because Dr. Bruce Banner is, in your opinion, one of the best anthropology professors at your college, but because he’s helped you pursue your degree in that exact subject area. Dr. Banner’s been a huge impact on your academic success, and this guy is just flat-out wrong about him.

You: first of all, why the fuck are you messaging me (or anyone) at 2am

You: second, wrong number. but banner’s a genius and you’re wrong.

Now you’re fully awake and ready for a debate. It’s why you joined a debate club - sometimes, the need to argue should be directed in more fulfilling avenues. But it’s 2 AM, for chrissakes.

Unknown: i didnt say he wasnt a genius. he just cant answer questions.

You sigh.

You: what sort of questions could you possibly have that he couldn’t answer

Unknown: why do you care anyway

You: it’s kind of my major, smartass

Unknown: shit alright its about this project on like African masks

You: there’s lots of those can you narrow it down

Unknown: i dont know how to! thats my problem

You: did he give you parameters for the assignment?

At this point, you decide to add this guy as a contact, even if out of pity for his apparent lack of skill in the field of anthropology. Maybe this could become a thing, you help him in anthro, he helps you in… whatever he studies? That’s a good question, actually.

Wrong # James: yeah he told us to write on african masks

Wrong # James: like write abt them not like ON on them

You: ok. Well what did you talk about in class?

Wrong # James: masks? from different regions

You: so like what masks from different regions looked like?

Wrong # James: ya

You: did you have a favorite?

Wrong # James: not really?

You: well maybe you should do some research on that and find a region that has masks/symbols that interest you

You: and also get your partner’s number lmao

Wrong # James: ur more helpful than he was tho

You: tough shit u still need to talk to him

You: what major are you anyway

Wrong # James: biomechanical engineering

Wrong # James: so like the opposite of anthro

You: true

Wrong # James: sorry abt waking you up btw

You: it’s no big deal lol

Except that it kind of was. You look at the clock, and it reads nearly 2:30.

Wrong # James: still its kinda late

Wrong # James: I feel bad now

Wrong # James: (…)

Wrong # James: do u wanna meet up sometime? when its not 2am? I need so much anthro help

The smile on your face is wide, because you were just about to suggest the same thing. You take a second to think about your response, but another message comes through before you can send something.

Wrong # James: nvm thats weird pretend i didnt suggest it

You: no! I was actually going to ask you the same thing. god knows I could use some calc help

Wrong # James: calc is so much easier than anthro shut up

You: math is the work of the devil

You: so you free tomorrow?

Wrong # James: ya is 4 good?

You: sure! Campus library?

Wrong # James: yea

You: wait I don’t know what you look like

Wrong # James: tall, brown hair?

You: that’s half the school population

Wrong # James: I’ll be in a stark industries shirt with a leather jacket and a dark green backpack, in the little area behind the sci-fi stuff

You: good that actually does narrow it down

Wrong # James: Wait I don’t know ur name wtf

You: it’s y/n

Wrong # James: see u tomorrow then, y/n

–

It’s 3:00 and you have an hour ‘til you meet up with James, so you’ve decided to stop by the little grocery store near your place to get some snacks. You don’t know what he’ll like, so you get some water and a few different types of candy, as well as some fresh fruit. On your way to the library, you stop by the bookstore to get another copy of one of your favorite books for anthropology - Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. You figure James might appreciate a more compelling, interesting read in the midst of textbooks and scholarly articles.

You come to the register and put the book on the counter, eyes cast down like usual. The guy at the counter, somehow always working when you’re there, takes it and rings you up. As you hand him your member card, you glance up to see oddly familiar white lettering. And a leather jacket. And a secondary glance tells you that his name-tag reads James (Bucky). You feel yourself pale as you look up at his face.

“Holy shit.”

He just looks at you, confused.

“Is there something wrong?”

For the first time since your first visit to the store, you look him straight in his pretty blue eyes. You get a sudden burst of confidence, and your shocked expression melts into a nonchalant shrug, smirk dancing at the edge of your lips.

“No, just this random asshole texted me at 2am asking to meet up.”

//send me a prompt

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes drabble #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky x you #fluff #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes writing #marvel fanfiction #strangerbucky can write #sometimes #marvel #fanfiction #bucky barnes reader insert #reader insert #first crack at this we'll see how it goes over

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wang-yeon · 7 years

Text

Chewing gum (Park Jimin X reader)

Warning: cursing, sexual themes, smut I guess, raunchy language, mentions of alcohol, slight mention of drugs but not really, fluffy fluff

Summary: y/n has enough piled on her plate being a full time college student and began a virgin is added to the list. In seek to ridden her purity she attempts to find the right guy. Little does she know that the right guy is more interested in something else rather than her purity.

college is a stressful time for any young adult struggling with their inner bullshit. Each day you are faced with a new face on campus. A new story. Friendships bond over simple conversations that start from inconsequential talk to a mind bending relationship. Just the simple thought is to send anyone into over drive. The simple crave to have a relationship was enough to impassion or have great value to someone resulting in a great impact in there lives. enough to last a life time.

Out of all the faces in the crowd that including mine, I was the only sad bastard that desired this feeling while everyone else establish it without minding a blink. If only they knew how lucky they truly were to have a lucky someone. It doesn't even have to be someone, anyone. Sometimes we just need anyone. It doesn't matter who it is. Just anyone to remind us what's it like to live in the moment, and feel something before its over completely.

Sure I did have that one person that attempted to pursue these unrealistic goals. His name was Jeon Jungkook , but he often went by the name of Jungcock. I remember that specific moment he tried to be that anyone, making me live in the moment but very poorly.

I had came to the conclusion that it was a brilliant idea to lose my virginity the night me and jungkook had attended a forced religious study brought to you by my ever so 'loving' parents. This making it the perfect setting to fuck, sorry to put it bluntly but these were the thoughts that once surfaced my sick teenage brain. Of course the mood hadn't been set, while I was completely ignoring it jungkook was soaking in the awkwardness.

Many attempts later trying to get jungkook off he finally lets out a cry, which I totally took the wrong way. Thinking it was a cry from pleasure I began jerking him off faster making his face contort into a painful expression. I evidently got the hint once he busted out into tears. I had planned the night out to the brim but what I didn't imagine was to have a crying jungkook, patting him awkwardly as he poured out his gay fantasies.

Safe to say ever since that night I had reminded a virgin. Which isn't wrong I just didn't want to live this depriving life anymore. yes there was always porn but that never works out for me. see before the porn even started I would already find myself turned on, just like any horny virgin stuck in college.

As soon as I would click on the 'adult entertainment' the plot beings instantly killing my lady boner. it doesn't add up to me, I come on the site for one thing to simple pleasure myself by seeing a 7-10 minute film filled with satisfying moans but instead I'm faced with a full on movie with a real plot as if they are gonna win a Oscar.

I had been convinced that my vagina had been broken. so I hide myself from the world. Surviving from ramen noodles and red bulls I was all set. I was to afraid that the world would perceive me differently because of this. People would often use my virginity to their advantage, seeing my purity as a prize. My only source being able to hide. until my roommate told me other wise. she had brought up how I wasn't being social that being one of the reasons my vagina had magically stopped working. It just gave up.

My vagina wants convinced no one wanted it because it was untouched and pure. Like a flower, if that flower was all fucked up suffering from her dumbass roommate.

Hours passed as she attempted to revamp my whole being. almost to the point of looking like a stripper. not to insult the strippers out there, I'm sure your definitely doing better off then me. the only reason why I decided to try and go to this party was not because of my new found appearance or because my roommates boyfriend namjoon would be getting the alcohol but because I was simply promised food.

nothing more nothing less.

there wasn't even food.

nothing but alcohol.

My roommate had left me by the time we got through the door leaving me to awkwardly pretend like I'm having an intimate fake conversation on the phone. "whos the lucky guy?" my attention was cut sort as I turned around being faced with a cheeky brunette who I must say had an award winning smile. His face was sure enough to kick start my broken vagina

(I am so sorry, I wrote this at 2am and I am now realizing what the fuck is wrong with me)

"the guy on the phone, or is it a girl. It is the 21st century and all." the overly handsome boy said pointing to my phone.

He must had heard the conversation between me and...well nobody sensing I had no one to talk to besides myself.

"Oh it was nobody." I say waving him off a with a slight smile, one that couldn't compete to his. it was weird that I was feeling such fondness to someone I haven't properly met, but damn was he good to look at.

"Oh well if it was nobody then I guess they wouldn't mind if I introduced myself." I never nodded my head as fast I did in that moment, I swear I almost broke my neck. I was still in the process of trying to figure out what he wanted to do with me. if only he knew what lied beneath all this stripper exterior. again no disrespect to strippers.

"My name is park jimin, but you can just call me jimin I don't mind. what about you? a beautiful girl like you must have a name."

He had me wrapped around his finger

"Oh my names Y/N, you can call me Y/N noting special I'm sorry." I played off my awkwardness with a quick deprived laugh.

"woah."

"what?" I began to panic searching my face for any minor detail on my face as his small statement worried me.

"Oh nothing, its just I cant believe someone as perfect as you could also share the name of a goddess." Jimin held a sweet exterior and I wanted nothing more than to see what he could actually be capable of when he gets the upper hand. it took everything in me to not rip his clothes off.

a small tug on my dress brought me out of my 'I need to fuck jimin' phase, as I turned around a complete bored expression painted my face. my roommate had come in at the most imperfect time. she had been the one to come up with the idea to get my broken vagina back in the works. I haven't even seen her this entire party and she pops up now. this must mean that I wasn't meant to have sex with jimin.

ha lets be honest I'm still gonna have sex with jimin.

but before I could take any sort of action my oh so lovely roommate decided to tug me off with her to a beer pong table. Jimin still sported his loving smile while I was being tugged away but soon deflated as I grew further away. well looks like I lost the only chance of sex tonight. I was placed at the head of the table, the horizon filled with seas of solo red cups with what I assumed were filled with beer.a happy roommate by my side wishing I could share the same expression but remained the unamused expression. That was until I found out who we were playing against.

"Hey jimin get over here, I cant lose to my girlfriend and her roommate." my head immediately shot up at namjoons mention of jimin. my head fully coming up from its previous stances as I face jimin.

He flashes me a smirk and bites his lips as he made eye contact with me. I noticed that he had gained more confidence due to his kill worthy actions and as I look over at the cups in my view and cant help but eagerly wonder how much more confidence jimin can gain by the simple sip of a cup. or two. the couple of rounds were spent by many laughs and the splashes of the ball hitting the intoxicating beer. as the rounds went on we saw the game as nothing but a blur enjoining each others company.

namjoon and roommate had been all over each other while me and jimin oh so subtlety flirted and shared affectionate glances. these actions were enough to send me into over drive.

I began to completely forget about the game as the sound of the ball hitting the rim clinked in my ears every chance I got. jimin retrieved the ball before sparing me a glance.

"This shot goes out to my lucky lady!" Jimin said clearly intoxicated but so was everyone at that party including myself. he still managed to make my heart swell even in his drunken oblivion.

"Go ahead kiss the ball baby, your my little good luck charm." jimin said shoving the ball in my face.

This situation already was weird by his choice of words but grew weirder as he shoved the ball in my face. none of the less I kissed the ball still remaining eye contact with him which he found oddly sexy.

"Maybe one on the lips for extra good luck." Oh park jimin was gonna be the death of me. I had to be a complete idiot to deny this. I placed my arms around his neck as he placed his around my waist. our lips were centimenairs apart, thesecual tensions driving us to close the gap.

"Hey don't give him all of your luck, we don't want them to win!" my roommate said as she proceeded to pull me and jimin apart. we both let out a loud sigh going back in our previous position. remind me to get a new roommate. eventfully jimin made the cup earning a satisfying splashing victory fill his teams ears.

I quickly reached for the cup noticing it being different from the cups, it being marked as 'the krusty krab secret formula'. Of course I drank it but as everyones face twisted into a scared expression I went quiet.

"Woah, whats wrong with you guys?"

"Joon, she took the special one...The dru-"

"I fucking know, cant you see me freaking out. maybe she'll be okay."

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN SHELL BE OKAY?! She just took a few grams of-"

"Lets go to the pool!"

Those had to be the most awkward moments for me. I stood there silently observing as namjoon and roommate attempted to have a quiet conversation about something I couldn't catch on to. I could tell jimin was just as confused as I was, but couldn't really focus on anything as I began to see pretty shapes and colors I could distinguish.

I somehow managed to make my way to the pool, in a very unstable fashion do to the liquids in my system. Everyone in the pool had took the liberty to swim in their underwear, so I followed along.

I felt a small tap on my shoulders turning around being faced with a the shit eating smirk that was painted on his face ever since the alcohol began lurking in his system. this was certainly a good thing as it was directing us to have a more direct conversation rather than sober.

"I thought I lost you for a second, couldn't lose someone as beautiful as you." To jimin he may have been saying the most simplest of things to me it was as if he was reciting a poem deep from his heart. For all I know he probably says this to countless amount of girls, what made me so special?

I quickly covered it up with a laugh and splashing water in his face which wasn't the best idea. The water had gotten trapped in his hair causing the once straight hair to become wet and stick to his forehead. Making him grow hotter.

Jimin responded by grabbing me by the waist and placing me on his shoulder, letting a yelp fall from my mouth.

"Jimin let me down." I protested but secretly knew that I didn't want him to let go. "Alright." Jimin obliged as he let go of me, a loud splash filled the atmosphere as both our bodies fell underneath the pools surface. I closed my eyes attempting to reach the surface of the pool before feeling a body collide with mine. I quickly came up to the surface with a dazed expression as my arms were locked around jimins neck and his on my waist.

It was sure enough to shock the both of us being in that position but was it a bad thing. "Look at that, I think I saved your life."

"I think you deserve an award due to such braver." I knew that my comment was risky but my actions were enough to diagnose me as borderline crazy. I had managed to easily wrap my legs around jimins waist bringing us at a closer proximity.

"Oh? I was hopping for just a kiss." Of course he was. Jimin didn't want me. He was far better then any of the guys I had ever thought of losing my virginity to. I took my legs off from around him. Looks like I was shit out of luck.

"I mean it certainly isn't a bad thing. I'm sure every part of you looks good...taste good." Jimin said seductively licking his lips as he brought my legs back around his waist. My cheeks began to flame a crimson color at his statement.

"Is this what you say to all of your girls?"

"I'm flattered that you think I have girls lined up but when will you notice it's only you. Your so beautiful. Every aspect of you. Your personality. Your beautiful body. Your perfect baby." Jimin finished his heartfelt sentence with a firm squeeze on my ass making it the icing on the cake.

I carefully brought my lips to his needing the feel of our lips together. The kiss started off slow almost as afraid it would end at any moment but as it progressed we began to become intoxicated by he kiss. The alcohol already consuming our system has added to the ecstasy flowing through as intensifying the feeling. Jimin backed slowly to the pool wall his hands beginning to wander to my core. My stomach tightened at his gesture letting a low moan fall from my lips. Encouraging his confidence.

"I wanna feel you baby, is that okay?" I nodded eagerly as his hands guided his way to my heat. His hands began to circle around my clit as he began kissing my neck leaving his love bites. Truth be told was I never had an orgasm, well no guy had ever gave me an organism. It was usually always my sex deprived self left alone to take care of my business making this a completely different experience. It had gotten so intense to the point that I couldn't control my moans. Jimin attempted to silence them with his lips only making me crave the moment even more.

He began to tease my opening, the euphoria coming in contact with my body once again. I couldn't take it anymore the feeling of the euphoria running through my body sending it into overdrive. I quickly grabbed jimins hands signaling him to stop. After all the setting we were in was a pool. Surrounded by people. Clearly Jimin couldn't help it. Somehow he did manage to extract his hands from my heat.

"Sorry, you were just so wet I couldn't help myself." It's like he wanted to take me right then and there which I would have obliged to but due to the scene sadly the circumstances couldn't have been the same.

"Jimin, it's like your trying to kill me!" I said hitting Jimin lightly on the arm embarrassed by his abrupt statement. Jimin thought nothing of it as he smiled into my neck giggling lightly.

"Don't hide your smile, it makes me insides melt." maybe the alcohol lurking in my system wasn't as good as his. I couldn't stop the flow of words leaving my mouth. each coming out after the next, each word more dirtier than the next. Even though jimin had the chance to swim away from me he didn't, choosing to stay. I had came to the conclusion that he was absoultuly insane, lucky for him I am to. obviously.

"Well I have to say seeing you in such minimal clothing really makes me want me take you here right now." Jimin said going along with conversation but his dirty talk was far better than mine, it also having a greater affect.

"And seeing you in this pool,water all over your body. Oh baby I'm sure you can be wetter than this." By this point I was dripping and ready for my virginity to be gracefully taken by park jimin.

We had managed to stumble up the steps with drunken kisses in search of the nearest bedroom in need to relieve the tension. Panic began to roll through my body as we entered the room, jimin quickly closing the door pushing me into the wall where he continued to kiss me. His hands soon diverted to the inside of my thighs growing closer to my heat. This simple action caused a loud moan to escape from my lips surprising jimin before a dark expression rolled over his face.

Jimin quickly picked me up placing me on the bed where he got in between my thighs ever so slightly and gently grinding against my core. At an agonizing rate. I wanted more lifting my hips meeting his thrusting making him let a deep groan but silencing it as his lips connected to my neck, me responding constantly to each mark he made.

"Hey can we try something?" I said in a quiet voice, not trusting myself to speak to loud afraid I would let out a loud moan. Jimin nodded his head but still continued his journey on leaving soft purple marks on my neck. I pushed him back a little before taking my shirt off causing jimins heart to quicken and his eyes to widen.

"Um may...May touch..Your um." I laughed at the new jimin before me. One who was stuttering due to nervousness. It was as if the confidence drained from him as I gided his hands to my clothed boobs. it was cute to see him venerable. His hands remained stiff before he squeezed them slightly making a quiet moan leave my lips.

This obviously encouraging him he continued his actions before I reached to updo my bra to which he stopped me. "Hey its okay, we don't have to do any drastic."

"Oh, um okay." I took my hand away from my bra straps bringing them to my side.

I had never gone this far with a guy and when I almost had they were never as indering as jimin was. I looked over his features before placing his face in my hands connecting our lips together. I climbed on his lap enjoying the sounds falling from his lips and I'm sure he felt the same as for me. I slowly grinded my hips feeling his member poke my thigh.

I proceeded to take off his shirt feeling over his muscles liking the skin to skin contact. our tonuges began to battle for dominance, I gided my ran to his member causing me to win the battle. I quickly reached for his zipper bringing it down before he stopped me.

"Hey calm down, we don't have to go this fast. We don't even have to have sex if you want to?" It cared that he worried about me and my thoughts but in reality I wanted nothing more but to fuck him and finally be ridden rom my virginity. "sorry I'm just really nervous."

"hey its okay like I said we don't have to do anything, I still think your a cool girl." a cool girl? I wanted be so much more than a cool girl, but I didn't protest instead just silently accepting.

"Yeah, we can still hang out, without doing anything major."

"Yeah, I would love to keep on talking to the beautiful girl I met tonight. Well I guess I should take you home." And just like that my virginity dreams were crushed.

jimin had managed to drive me back to my dorm room with the help of making sure I was in the right state of mind. I invited him into the dorm with open arms as he excepted it insisting he needed to nurse me back to health. aka he wanted to have sex with me. at least I think I sat fidgeting on my bed as jimin retrieved some water for me, and then proceeding to sit on the bed with me crossing his fingers. as we both sat in silence.

filling the air with tension.

"I'm sorry." I say as my lips quivered realizing my idiotic behavior that occurred throughout the night.

"Oh baby you don't need to be sorry, sure the night didn't go as we planned but one thing for sure is that I met a beautiful girl through it."

Their he goes again saying romantic things making my heart swoon. why did he have to be so perfect. to perfect. someone I couldn't get no matter how hard I longed for.

"Oh please, I'm not beautiful. sure with the makeup I look descent but besides that, I look identical to a trashcan." Jimin had a bored expression playing on his face as these words left my mouth not beliving a word that flowed from my mouth.

"Okay you want me to be honest? You remind me of a flower, a flower that is anything but beautiful and worthy, at least that's what people may think. but when you bloom and open up to the people around you that's when your beauty shows. You need to open up to people more instead of opening your legs to get to the source, because that doesn't matter like your personality ."

Sure the beginning of the sentence didn't begin off oh so glamorous but it was the message that he proclaimed that caused his statement to come off sincere. In that moment I realized that I was looking for something when something else had already found me. what I'm trying to say is that I was seeking to lose my virginity something that means a lot to a person, that's all I was focused on.

While jimin was focused on the likeability, he didn't care about my sex appeal just about my heart. That's all he was seeking for, just someone he could care for. He found me. I was to naïve to realize it. I was lost in my head. He was lost in his heart. He wasn't as lost as I was, I was far beyond lost that I couldn't make sense of it or why it was meant for me but yet I began to be drawn to it all.

Now as we lay in my bed mindlessly kissing Id like to think after all the tragic events that occurred that somehow he feels the same. So perhaps being connected to someone and not in a sexual derogatory manor but rather as a close relationship. This being something I had craved all along. The need to need someone, anyone.

Jimins hands carefully holding my waist making me feel like I am as fragile and delicate as a doll. His care makes me feel as if I was his main priority. Its crazy after one night how quick a connection can occur between two people. weather it be a friendship or sexual encounter.

I had thought about what the world thinks of me. My appearance. my personality. My virginity. every aspect of me. I have thought about this for so long that some parts of me have changed to fit the life of others I achieved to once be. I can see now that virginity has nothing to do with these aspects.Just some sorry excuses i used, blocking out the real problem. I longed for a human connection.

His soft snores filled my ears his arms wrapping tighter around me as if he's afraid that ill leave. I had someone who cares about me and shows open affection, and if at least one person can see my true self/ beauty instead of seeing my virginity as a title. then I can have the will power to show my true self and actually open up to the people I care for the most.

A/n I wanted to post this story sometime sooner but turns out a special person was giving birth and I had to go witnesses it and I saw EVERYTHING but I manage to finish the writing while she gave birth. also I'm thinking about a part two

#park jimin x reader #park jimin smut #park jimin imagines #jimin x reader #jimin smut #jimin imagine #bts scenarios #bts jimin #bts jimin x reader #imagines #bts #jimin fanfic #park jimin fanfic

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coffeeselfies · 9 years

Photo

This is technically the “I think I need coffee,” selfie, but it’s been so long since I’ve posted that I figured anything was better than nothing.

I’m still trying to sleep through the inspiration of a very wonderful Bob Goff.

I. love. him.

But on to darker things, like my not-so-distant past!

Hahaha. So I was looking for an old assignment I e-mailed myself, and instead found a bunch of cryptic-heavy things I had texted one of my rarely used e-mails from my phone.

So of course I’m going to put them together, here, since I will probably just lose them otherwise. And because everyone on the internet loves reading the things I e-mail to, well, myself (WAIT, DO I NOT HAVE FRIENDS, WHAT IS MY LIFE). :p

4/12/12 - A veces no quiero hablar Por Nada con mis amigos. Solamente, "Hoy me dice ,estas loca, pero le esta loco a Juan!" Y mas Nada. Yo quiero hablar about cosas lejas. Ayer y Hoy hable con jean y veronika, solamente small talk primer. Pero despues, yo decido hablar about the things which I was.actually thinking about lately, the deeper layers. My thoughts were kind of awkward. Random. But I'm so glad I did, it lead to such good convos! As if, although my own thoughts or specific revelation (another one about love, of course), but led to true, sincere convos from the heart. Yes! Thank you, Lord. It's funny how I won't open up and ill get frustrated at the lack of depth in a conversation, yet really all I need to do in some cases is just jump right into the true issues. Ahh small talk kills me.

3/4/12 - He asked us a few questions: Who are you using?

How are you using them?

Physically. Sexually. Emotionally. Spiritually. Monetarily.

How can you restore that? Who's using you? Do you love money, and use people?

Or do you love people, and use money?

5/9/12 I think my id and superego are in conflict... I prefer that psychological term to saying that right vs wrong or my flesh is in rebellion, I guess. I just want to do all sorts of things that aren't of God, and i don't even know what to do. I think I need to just remember that life is short, and not about what I want. I'm getting too caught up in the worldly details, my visions going, my path, every time I think I'm expanding it, is getting more and more limited. Goodnight, from post Dave n busters with cartel, post umsl, going to school tmrw.

5/17/12 - "Can you keep a secret?" I should have realized by now that this question should be answered with fear and heaviness rather than curiosity.

5/29/12 - I dreamt that, after they thought I had left, my parents started fighting. Loudly, viciously, hatefully. I came down shouting, 'stop it, stop it!!' But their heads were already covered in blood, as I'd they were going to kill eachother. I never found out if they stopped or not, because dad called to me in real life from the other room. At first I wondered if I had really been shouting, and that's why he had contacted me, but no, it was just about bulk trash being today. Something sounds like its gnawing on something, I can hear and feel the vibrations of it through my pillow. Creepy.

6/4/12 - I have always been a compassionate person – making little houses for wounded snakes and worms – befriending the kid who’s got no one but himself for company, partnering with the girl who doesn’t really speak English. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized that God has been faithful in granting me patience, mercy, and grace as well, and I know that these are not my own, but I am meant to share them with the very people God has give me a heart for – the downtrodden, broken, and outcast, and ultimately just humanity in general. This has, more or less, been my (more recent) life pursuit. To follow God’s Will for my life, regardless of where it takes me. So far that has meant giving hope to weary and often lost travelers of Amsterdam, mentoring at risk juveniles and raising awareness for human trafficking in Los Angeles, running English and Summer-School programs for Chinese immigrants in New York City, training and creating jobs for families in Haiti, as well as hosting events and creating opportunities for girls to leave brothels , learning how to run a business in Mexico while also helping out at various orphanages for disabled Children, and even just being there for my own family and friends when they’ve needed it most. It has meant months of Ministry Training schools, years of living in International Community Houses, working in roles that range from administration, to construction, to managerial, and an ever growing reliance on and relationship with Jesus Christ.I’ve been back in Saint Louis for a year now,

7/1/12 - Today started strangely, my head still a little blurry from the wine from the night before. I went to church, very late, where daren had a cupcake waiting for me. Why? Because Tuesday I had admitted I had experienced some downer bdays and he realized that it was my half birthday. Mom came, cried, we hugged, went to the church picnic.. I went home, told dad about her accident, and he just started weeping, so hard that his nose began to.bleed. I stroked his hair and.got a bit teary eyed.and then we got.on our knees and prayed... Later was feeling down and missing Luke, but jean got me out.

11/11/12 - And with your hands in the air, your feet barely touching ground, I take that smile to mean that life is finally turning 'round. And we laugh til we cry and we dance til we cant, and I feel free as can be each time I see that gleam in your eye. Then the secrets come out and its less about being blessed and more about a high. So when you're dancing I'm wondering if that's you, and when you're singing, I know you would be singing.the blues... But that gleam in your eye, well really its more of a glaze all along, I just saw what I wanted as you,strung me along.

12/20/12 -

Well the queens off her throne Hiding in a stairwell Feet strewn about the stairs Seeming barely aware That her kingdom awaits The king, divorced long ago He's crying Where's his iron fist? Seems he's traded it for sentiment "Pathetic!" He might self accuse If only his tears would let him Seems everything's a dream these days, Some hellish, some sweet But all

I used to find the idea of receiving a text in the middle of the night strange.

Now, after years of practice, I find it comforting, perhaps a reminder that I am not so alone as I would feel.

I hadn't realized this, of course, until now.

Now, when I wake up to nothing but darkness and my own thoughts.

Now, when, regardless of whether I toss myself awake at 2am or 4am, there is no message.

There's nothing to reassure me that there's another person in this world who is awake and eager to share a moment, even a small, electronic message with me.

1/11/13 - Today Gave my testimony. Adopt a block, played ninja. Eva likes hanging out with Christians. I break rules and have real convos with the disciples. Play bs. Go to angelus temple. Do food distribution. Met hosea who talked to us because he thought I was pretty, was super catholic, thought tim was my bf, etc etc etc

1/29/13 - Oh hi, I'm feeling cold and pathetic, and thought I would ... Email myself. That seems fitting. Somehow emailing yourself feels much more pathetic than just journaling. Right now I feel like I wish anyone, absolutely anyone , would sit down across from me. Even the old creepy man who, after asking a few non essential questions, left me for the warmth of the indoors, or... I don't know, a donut. Why do I feel like this.Lord? Is it because I am not so busy in school? Is it because Adam moved and despite the fact that I was barely hanging out with him last semester anyway, he was a crutch, and knowing that at 1am when I feel pathetic and lonely and confused, I can't even text someone I know would care? I mean. I know others would care. But we aren't exactly on that level just yet. What is my life? Why am I this way, and why do I want attention for it? Or why do I feel the need to find someone who would , what, save me ? From myself.? From my thoughts? Why am I seeking comfort in shallow things, the wings of friends and acquaintences and , frick, anything. Whywhywhywhy. I don't know. Is this what life is like for people? Lord, you are the one God, the only thing worth it, you are good when no one else is, am I getting caught up in things that I shouldn't, what am I even going on about? Life life life. It's all good, right

2/13/13 - (From a voice to text translator)

tomorrow I'm supposed to have an awkward cuddling session with my love scene manager and a love my phone from church I'm not sure how I get myself into these awkward situations but I definitely am good at it office tomorrow my uncle is moving in for a month but should be really awkward and I wish that I had a lock on my door and the house I'm learning that the things that I desire to have a find myself feeling empty when I do get them but I'm happy about it because it gets me clarity because it shows me that nothing else really matters is just kind of in my head really got the only thing that matters is the only thing I should pursue S I miss Adam I know you won't hang out that much before you left but now I guess I'm missing him double I don't know I don't know what I mean exactly but he's been gone a few weeks now and it's weird not having a best friend to talk to you about everything I have a lot of friends I have a lot of good friends but this is different it is different when you have someone who knows so much about you already and you don't have to tell the back story every time you tell them a new story because I already know who so I'm so is or why you feel that way or white was a bad idea that you did that so I'm also giving up ice cream and I'll call for lunch and I'm going to be time to eat a lot better subject tomorrow hopefully that I've also really just been wanting to be free of employment just live and everyday wake up and say what I want to do without help homeless people if I want to make something I want to sell another day love you babe I wanna go out with a friend I make my card I definitely don't want to spend 5 shifts a week at cartel but at the same time I don't feel like I'm self disciplined enough to not have a job I'm just getting tired of the creepers and the internet the kids off work as well as yeah I don't know ent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!

8/18/13 -

Woke up really missing my dad. Go figure. Able to properly seduce emotions into a flat, shruggable denial ever since those first few days, and now, on the day I hoped to "stay strong" the most, I can't stop thinking of part of the song he wrote for Rachel, only now in regards to him - "I miss you, in the summertime.. I miss you, in the wintertime.. I miss you - all the time. I love my Rachel Sue." Only.. Daddy-o, or something. Ahhh.. Thank you, Lord, for such a kind father. Please help today glorify your name, run smoothly.. its so obvious we can't do it without you.

8/19/13 - I miss my dad. I am sad that I'll never have him burst in my room in November at three am with pancakes and lit birthday candles because he started thinking about some of the birthdays of mine he had missed, and wanted us to be able to celebrate together. I can't drink milk or even look at rootbeer without hearing him ask for some, so eagerly, and then sigh 'mmmm, now that's good,' so contentedly after his first sip. I miss that his crazy stories are not going to be things that I share in everyday conversation with my friends, because they're all old stories and it will seem out of place. who do i have to talk to about my dad? no one. it makes everyone sad. theres no one to just share his life with, aside from close family, and that will be limited. Everyone keeps telling me I'm so strong. What does that mean?I'm strong because I didn't start sobbing when I spoke? Because I'm smiling and laughing with you? Is that strength or disposition? Blake said that I was handling this better than anyone he's ever seen deal with death. What does that mean?

12/13/13

I see a sadness in your eyes.Behind the words, another message.The weight of your world becomes tangible, heavy, a thickness that weights me like a fog rolling in with, strapping invisible bricks to my body. Sometimes it's your words, blatant and straightforward, other times it's the sighs, the eyes that flash with emotion for just a moment, Did you know that's been seen? So many words, how can they be contained? I hear things you've never said, I see

1/03/14-

I've tried reflecting on 2013.. tried finding words which could somehow, miraculously encapsulate all of the growth, struggle, joy, depression, transformation, and experiences that it contained. It will be one of the most memorable years of my life, for many reasons, but it may also be one of those years that the full impact of may be lost on me for awhile now.In the past few weeks, I've been looking through journals, photos, and letters, remembering and realizing exactly how many changes this year has brought. Led my first missions trip, felt the loss of saying goodbye to one of my best friends, discovered what living with not just my dad, but my uncle Ken, five chickens, two cats, two ducks, a dog, and whoever else decided to stay over was like, became the missions director at middletree church, became an AUNT to the most beautiful little Emelia Skye, gained a new set of amazing and wonderful friends, played nurse/daughter/friend/staff member/sister/maid/hopsicecare/barista/student/leader to the point of confused identity and exhaustion, left cartel to become part of the Caife Caife family, DIDN'T leave the country for the first time in yeaaaaars, actually had to turn down exciting travel/jobs, speaking opportunities, and a leadership position with a non-profit (rather than seek them out, like usual), spent 7 months of the year experiencing the beauty, hardship, and love of caring someone who is dying in more and more ways every day, the trauma and release of my dad's actual death, the months following that are nothing but fog, sorrow, and blurred memories, the 14-state family road trip of a lifetime, moving to the Loop with Dani, experiencing being 'home for the holidays' without any actual family to be home with, and .. I don't know.. the Sara of today, who can look back on things only a year ago and find I have a whole new perspective on them. ..I only wrote one public (well, as public as it can be when I have a total of 8, predominately inactive followers) blog post in 2013, mostly talking about overcoming fear to become the person I feel I'm called to be. It was mostly inspired by revelations from the LA Dream Center trip, and I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to look back on the goals and dreams I wanted so desperately to become a reality, and to be able to say that, even through all the changes and sorrow of this year, that they were able to come to fruition. I'm not in to new years resolutions, but I do highly recommend kickstarting your year with an inspiring, transformative experience, which can set the trajectory for how you are going to live, what goals you will meet or fall short of (but still come closer to, which is still GROWTH, something to celebrate!) in the coming adventure of 2014. No matter what 2013 held, don't let fear of who you were just last month keep you from being who you want to be tomorrow. This little blog post is nice for me to re-read, because it reminds me of my fears, and what overcoming them, even one step at a time, can lead to. 2013 was a hard year for me, but it has also brought me to exactly where I feel I'm supposed to be right now.

1/29/14 - "I'm good" I wore the reassuring words like a blanket. Cover, no, smother whatever was beneath, within. Protect yourself from the cold, vulnerable words might slip thru the holes in the blanket... exposed means they can feel temperature of your meaning. Heavy, heat from the heart. you can feel their response. Pray for a warm touch, but there's always risk of icicle daggers

2/19/14

it's just that

I have a lot of thoughts

ideas, fears, ..a lot of places that I'd like to explore

But they feel so heavy when it's just me and them

feels like there’s a lot of trees to climb before i get to the clouds

and I'd like to share them with someone

who cares about them just as much as I do,

someone with just as much to risk,

who understands each side of the story.

And sometimes, I see planets in those eyes,

but have no rocketship to get me there

And I see that depth, but there's just no way to tap in

Im searching for someone to explore with

those infinite galaxies in your mind and mine.

Someone to make sense of it,

write poetry about it

but not get so caught up that it's just us - no

Always God first.

Always seeking his planets, his stars, his truth..

and maybe that's the adventure..

0 notes

viralhottopics · 7 years

Text

Sickening, gruelling or frightful: how doctors measure pain | John Walsh

The Long Read: Suffering is difficult to describe and impossible to see. So how can doctors tell how much it hurts?

One night in May, my wife sat up in bed and said, Ive got this awful pain just here. She prodded her abdomen and made a face. It feels like somethings really wrong. Woozily noting that it was 2am, I asked what kind of pain it was. Like somethings biting into me and wont stop, she said.

Hold on, I said blearily, help is at hand. I brought her a couple of ibuprofen with some water, which she downed, clutching my hand and waiting for the ache to subside.

An hour later, she was sitting up in bed again, in real distress. Its worse now, she said, really nasty. Can you phone the doctor? Miraculously, the family doctor answered the phone at 3am, listened to her recital of symptoms and concluded, It might be your appendix. Have you had yours taken out? No, she hadnt. It could be appendicitis, he surmised, but if it was dangerous youd be in much worse pain than youre in. Go to the hospital in the morning, but for now, take some paracetamol and try to sleep.

Barely half an hour later, the balloon went up. She was awakened for the third time, but now with a pain so savage and uncontainable it made her howl. The time for murmured assurances and spousal procrastination was over. I rang a local minicab, struggled into my clothes, bundled her into a dressing gown, and we sped to St Marys Paddington at just before 4am.

The flurry of action made the pain subside, if only through distraction, and we sat for hours while doctors brought forms to be filled, took her blood pressure and ran tests. A registrar poked a needle into my wifes wrist and said, Does that hurt? Does that? How about that? before concluding: Impressive. You have a very high pain threshold.

The pain was from pancreatitis, brought on by rogue gallstones that had escaped from her gall bladder and made their way, like fleeing convicts, to a refuge in her pancreas, causing agony. She was given a course of antibiotics and, a month later, had an operation to remove her gall bladder.

Its keyhole surgery, said the surgeon breezily, so youll be back to normal very soon. Some people feel well enough to take the bus home after the operation. His optimism was misplaced. My wife came home the following day filled with painkillers. When they wore off, she writhed with suffering. After three days she rang the specialist, only to be told: Its not the operation thats causing discomfort its the air that was pumped inside you to separate the organs before surgery. Once the operation had proved a success, the surgeons had apparently lost interest in the fallout.

During that period of convalescence, as I watched her grimace and clench her teeth and let slip little cries of anguish until a long regimen of combined ibuprofen and codeine finally conquered the pain, several questions came into my head. Chief among them was: Can anyone in the medical profession talk about pain with any authority? From the family doctor to the surgeon, their remarks and suggestions seemed tentative, generalised, unknowing and potentially dangerous: Was it right for the doctor to tell my wife that her level of pain didnt sound like appendicitis when the doctor didnt know whether she had a high or low pain threshold? Should he have advised her to stay in bed and risk her appendix exploding into peritonitis? How could surgeons predict that patients would feel only discomfort after such an operation when she felt agony an agony that was aggravated by fear that the operation had been a failure?

I also wondered if there were any agreed words that would help a doctor understand the pain felt by a patient. I thought of my father, a GP in the 1960s with an NHS practice in south London, who used to marvel at the colourful pain symptoms he heard: Its like Ive been attacked with a stapler; Like having rabbits running up and down my spine; Its like someones opened a cocktail umbrella in my penis Few of them, he told me, corresponded to the symptoms listed in a medical textbook. So how should he proceed? By guesswork and aspirin?

There seemed to be a chasm of understanding in human discussions of pain. I wanted to find out how the medical profession apprehends pain the language it uses for something thats invisible to the naked eye, that cant be measured except by asking for the sufferers subjective description, and that can be treated only by the use of opium derivatives that go back to the middle ages.

When investigating pain, the basic procedure for clinics everywhere is to give a patient the McGill pain questionnaire. Developed in the 1970s by two scientists, Dr Ronald Melzack and Dr Warren Torgerson, both of McGill University in Montreal, it is still the main tool for measuring pain in clinics worldwide.

Melzack and his colleague Dr Patrick Wall of St Thomas Hospital in London had already galvanised the field of pain research in 1965 with their seminal gate control theory, a ground-breaking explanation of how psychology can affect the bodys perception of pain. In 1984, the pair went on to write Wall and Melzacks Textbook of Pain, the most comprehensive reference work in pain medicine. It has gone through five editions and is currently more than 1,000 pages long.

In the early 1970s, Melzack began to list the words patients used to describe their pain and classified them into three categories: sensory (which included heat, pressure, throbbing or pounding sensations), affective (which related to emotional effects, such as tiring, sickening, gruelling or frightful) and lastly evaluative (evocative of an experience from annoying and troublesome to horrible, unbearable and excruciating).

You dont have to be a linguistic genius to see there are shortcomings in this range of terms. For one thing, some words in the affective and evaluative categories seem interchangeable theres no difference between frightful in the former and horrible in the latter, or between tiring and annoying and all the words share an unfortunate quality of sounding like a duchess complaining about a ball that didnt meet her standards.

But Melzacks grid of suffering formed the basis of what became the McGill pain questionnaire. The patient listens as a list of pain descriptors is read out and has to say whether each word describes their pain and, if so, to rate the intensity of the feeling. The clinicians then look at the questionnaire and put check marks in the appropriate places. This gives the clinician a number, or a percentage figure, to work with in assessing, later, whether a treatment has brought the patients pain down (or up).

A more recent variant is the National Initiative on Pain Controls pain quality assessment scale (PQAS), in which patients are asked to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how intense or sharp, hot, dull, cold, sensitive, tender, itchy, etc their pain has been over the past week.

The trouble with this approach is the imprecision of that scale of 1 to 10, where a 10 would be the most intense pain sensation imaginable. How does a patient imagine the worst pain ever and give their own pain a number? Some men may find it hard to imagine anything more agonising than toothache or a tennis injury. Women who have experienced childbirth may, after that experience, rate everything else as a 3 or 4.

I asked some friends what they thought the worst physical pain might be. Inevitably, they just described nasty things that had happened to them. One man nominated gout. He recalled lying on a sofa, with his gouty foot resting on a pillow, when a visiting aunt passed by; the chiffon scarf she was wearing slipped from her neck and lightly touched his foot. It was unbearable agony.

A brother-in-law nominated post-root-canal toothache unlike muscular or back pain, he said, it couldnt be alleviated by shifting your posture. It was relentless. A male friend confided that a haemorrhoidectomy had left him with irritable bowel syndrome, in which a daily spasm made him feel as if somebody had shoved a stirrup pump up my arse and was pumping furiously. The pain was, he said, boundless, as if it wouldnt stop until I exploded. A woman friend recalled the moment the hem of her husbands trouser leg snagged on her big toe, ripping the nail clean off. She used a musical analogy to explain the effect: Id been through childbirth, Id broken my leg and I recalled them both as low moaning noises, like cellos; the ripped-off nail was excruciating, a great, high, deafening shriek of psychopathic violins, like nothing Id heard or felt before.

It seems a shame that these eloquent descriptions are reduced by the McGill questionnaire to words like throbbing or sharp, but its function is simply to give pain a number a number that will, with luck, be decreased after treatment, when the patient is reassessed.

This procedure doesnt impress Professor Stephen McMahon of the London Pain Consortium, an organisation formed in 2002 to promote internationally competitive research into pain. There are lots of problems that come with trying to measure pain, he says. I think the obsession with numbers is an oversimplification. Pain is not unidimensional. It doesnt just come with scale a lot or a little it comes with other baggage: how threatening it is, how emotionally disturbing, how it affects your ability to concentrate. The measuring obsession probably comes from the regulators who think that, to understand drugs, you have to show efficacy. And the American Food and Drug Administration dont like quality-of-life assessments; they like hard numbers. So were thrown back on giving it a number and scoring it. Its a bit of a wasted exercise because its only one dimension of pain that were capturing.

Illustration: Matthew Richardson

Pain can be either acute or chronic, and the words do not (as some people think) mean bad and very bad. Acute pain means a temporary or one-off feeling of discomfort, which is usually treated with drugs; chronic pain persists over time and has to be lived with as a malevolent everyday companion. But because patients build up a resistance to drugs, other forms of treatment must be found for it.

The Pain Management and Neuromodulation Centre at Guys and St Thomas Hospital in central London is the biggest pain centre in Europe. Heading the team there is Dr Adnan Al-Kaisy, who studied medicine at the University of Basrah, Iraq, and later worked in anaesthetics at specialist centres in England, the US and Canada.

Id say that 55 to 60% of our patients suffer from lower back pain, he says. The reason is, simply, that we dont pay attention to the demands life makes on us, the way we sit, stand, walk and so on. We sit for hours in front of a computer, with the body putting heavy pressure on small joints in the back. Al-Kaisy reckons that in the UK the incidence of chronic lower back pain has increased substantially in the last 15 to 20 years, and that the cost in lost working days is about 6 to 7 billion.

Elsewhere the clinic treats those suffering from severe chronic headaches and injuries from accidents that affect the nervous system.

Do they still use the McGill questionnaire? Unfortunately yes, says Al-Kaisy. Its a subjective measurement. But pain can be magnified by a domestic argument or trouble at work, so we try to find out about the patients life their sleeping patterns, their ability to walk and stand, their appetite. Its not just the patients condition, its also their environment.

The challenge is to transform this information into scientific data. Were working with Professor Raymond Lee, chair of Biomechanics at the South Bank University, to see if there can be objective measurement of a patients disability due to pain, he says. Theyre trying to develop a tool, rather like an accelerometer, which will give an accurate impression of how active or disabled they are, and tell us the cause of their pain from the way they sit or stand. Were really keen to get away from just asking the patient how bad their pain is.

Some patients arrive with pains that are far worse than backache and require special treatment. Al-Kaisy describes one patient let us call him Carter who suffered from a terrible condition called ilioinguinal neuralgia, a disorder that produces a severe burning and stabbing pain in the groin. Hed had an operation in the testicular area, and the inguinal nerve had been cut. The pain was excruciating: when he came to us, he was on four or five different medications, opiates with very high dosages, anticonvulsive medication, opioid patches, paracetamol and ibuprofen on top of that. His life was turned upside down, his job was on the line. The utterly stricken Carter was to become one of Al-Kaisys big successes.

Since 2010, Guys and St Thomas has offered a residential programme for adults whose chronic pain hasnt responded to treatment at other clinics. The patients come in for four weeks, away from their normal environment, and are seen by a motley crew of psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational health specialists and nursing physicians who between them devise a programme to teach them strategies for managing their pain.

Many of these strategies come under the heading of neuromodulation, a term you hear a lot in pain management circles. In simple terms, it means distracting the brain from constantly brooding on the pain signals it is getting from the bodys periphery. Sometimes the distraction is a cunningly deployed electric shock.

We were the first centre in the world to pioneer spinal cord stimulation, says Al-Kaisy. In pain occasions, overactive nerves send impulses from the periphery to the spinal cord and from there to the brain, which starts to register pain. We try to send small bolts of electricity to the spinal cord by inserting a wire in the epidural area. Its only one or two volts, so the patient feels just a tingling sensation over where the pain is, instead of feeling the actual pain. After two weeks, we give the patient an internal power battery with a remote control, so he can switch it on whenever he feels pain and carry on with his life. Its essentially a pacemaker that suppresses the hyperexcitability of nerves by delivering subthreshold stimulation. The patient feels nothing except his pain going down. Its not invasive we usually send patients home the same day.

When Carter, suffering from agonising pain in the groin, had failed to respond to any other treatments, Al-Kaisy tried his new combination of therapies. We gave him something called a dorsal root ganglion stimulation. Its like a small junction-box, placed just underneath one of the bones of the spine. It makes the spine hyperexcited, and sends impulses to the spinal cord and the brain. I pioneered a new technique to put a small wire into the ganglion, connected to an external power battery. Over 10 days the intensity of pain went down by 70% by the patients own assessment. He wrote me a very nice email saying I had changed his life, that the pain had just stopped completely, and that he was coming back to normality. He said his job was saved, as was his marriage, and he wanted to go back to playing sport. I told him, Take it easy. You mustnt start climbing the Himalayas just yet. Al-Kaisy beams. This is a remarkable outcome. You cannot get it from any other therapies.

The greatest recent breakthrough in assessing pain, according to Professor Irene Tracey, head of the University of Oxfords Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, has been the understanding that chronic pain is a thing in its own right. She explains: We always thought of it as acute pain that just goes on and on and if chronic pain is just a continuation of acute pain, lets fix the thing that caused the acute and the chronic should go away. That has spectacularly failed. Now we think of chronic pain as a shift to another place, with different mechanisms, such as changes in genetic expression, chemical release, neurophysiology and wiring. Weve got all these completely new ways of thinking about chronic pain. Thats the paradigm shift in the pain field.

Tracey has been called the Queen of Pain by some media commentators. She was, until recently, the Nuffield Professor of anaesthetic science and is an expert in neuroimaging techniques that explore the brains responses to pain. Despite her nickname, in person she is far from alarming: a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, welcoming and hectically fluent woman of 50, she talks about pain at a personal level. She has no problem defining the ultimate pain that scores 10 on the McGill questionnaire: Ive been through childbirth three times, and my 10 is a very different 10 from before I had kids. Ive got a whole new calibration on that scale. But how does she explain the ultimate pain to people who havent experienced childbirth? I say, Imagine youve slammed your hand in a car door thats 10.

She uses a personal example to explain the way perception and circumstance can alter the way we experience pain, as well as the phenomenon of hedonic flipping, which can convert pain from an unpleasant sensation into something you dont mind. I did the London Marathon this year. It needs a lot of training and running and your muscles ache, and next day youre really in pain, but its a nice pain. Im no masochist, but I associate the muscle pain with thoughts like, I did something healthy with my body, Im training, and Its all going well.

I ask her why there seems to be a gap between doctors and patients apprehension of pain. Its very hard to understand, because the system goes wrong from the point of injury, along the nerve thats taken the signal into the spinal cord, which sends signals to the brain, which sends signals back, and it all unravels with terrible consequential changes. So my patient may be saying, Ive got this excruciating pain here, and Im trying to see where its coming from, and theres a mismatch here because you cant see any damage or any oozing blood. So we say, Oh come now, youre obviously exaggerating, it cant be as bad as that. Thats wrong its a cultural bias we grew up with, without realising.

Recently, she says, there has been a breakthrough in understanding about how the brain is involved in pain. Neuroimaging, she explains, helps to connect the subjective pain with the objective perception of it. It fills that space between what you can see and whats being reported. We can plug that gap and explain why the patient is in pain even though you cant see it on your x-ray or whatever. Youre helping to bring truth and validity to these poor people who are in pain but not believed.

But you cant simply see pain glowing and throbbing on the screen in front of you. Brain imaging has taught us about the networks of the brain and how they work, she says. Its not a pain-measuring device. Its a tool that gives you fantastic insight into the anatomy, the physiology and the neurochemistry of your body and can tell us why you have pain, and where we should go in and try to fix it.

Some of the ways in, she says, are remarkably direct and mechanical like Al-Kaisys spinal cord stimulation wire. There are now devices you can attach to your head and allow you to manipulate bits of the brain. You can wear them like bathing caps. Theyre portable, ethically allowed brain-simulation devices. Theyre easy for patients to use and evidence is coming, in clinical trials, that they are good for strokes and rehabilitation. Theres a parallel with the games industry, where theyre making devices you can put on your head so kids can use thought to move balls around. The games industry is, for fun, driving this idea that when you use your brain, you generate electrical activities. Theyre developing the technology really fast, and we can use it in medical applications.

Illustration: Matthew Richardson

Pain has become a huge area of medical research in the US, for a simple reason. Chronic pain affects over 100 million Americans and costs the country more than half a trillion dollars a year in lost working hours, which is why it has become a magnet for funding by big business and government.

Researchers at the Human Pain Research Laboratory at Stanford University, California, are working to gain a better understanding of individual responses to pain so that treatments can be more targeted. The laboratory has several study initiatives on the go into migraine, fibromyalgia, facial pain and other conditions but its largest is into back pain. It has been endowed with a $10m grant from the National Institutes of Health to study non-drug alternative treatments for lower back pain. The specific treatments are mindfulness, acupuncture, cognitive behavioural therapy and real-time neural feedback.

They plan to inspect the pain tolerance of 400 people over five years of study, ranging from pain-free volunteers to the most wretched chronic sufferers who have been to other specialists but found no relief. The idea is to find peoples mid-range tolerance (theyre asked to rate their pain while they are experiencing it), to establish a usable baseline. They then are given the non-invasive treatments such as mindfulness and acupuncture and are subjected afterwards to the same pain stimuli, to see how their pain tolerance has changed from their baseline reading. MRI scanning is used on the patients in both laboratory sessions, so that clinicians can see and draw inferences from the visible differences in blood flow to different parts of the brain.

A remarkable feature of the assessment process is that patients are also given scores for psychological states: a scale measures their level of depression, anxiety, anger, physical functioning, pain behaviour and how much pain interferes with their lives. This should allow physicians to use the information to target specific treatments. All these findings are stored in an informatics platform called Choir, which stands for the Collaborative Health Outcomes Information Registry. It has files on 15,000 patients, 54,000 unique clinic visits and 40,000 follow-up meetings.

The big chief at the Human Pain Research Laboratory is Dr Sean Mackey, Redlich professor of anaesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, neurosciences and neurology at Stanford. His background is in bioengineering, and under his governance the Stanford Pain Management Center has twice been designated a centre of excellence by the American Pain Society. A tall, genial, easy-going man, he is sometimes approached by legal firms who want him to appear in court to state definitively whether their client is or is not in chronic pain (and therefore justified in claiming absentee benefit). His response is surprising.

In 2008, I was asked by a law firm to speak in an industrial injury case in Arizona. This poor guy got hot burning asphalt sprayed on his arm at work; he had a claim of burning neuropathic pain. The plaintiffs side brought in a cognitive scientist, who scanned his brain and said there was conclusive evidence that he had chronic pain. The defence asked me to comment, and I said, Thats hogwash, we cannot use this technology for that purpose.

Shortly afterwards, I gave a talk on pain, neuroimaging and the law, explaining why you cant do this because theres too much individual variability in pain, and the technology isnt sensor-specific enough. But I concluded by saying, If you were to do this, youd use modern machine-learning approaches, like those used for satellite reconnaissance to determine whether a satellite is seeing a tank or a civilian truck. Some of my students said, Can you give us some money to try this? I said, Yes, but it cant be done. But they designed the experiment and discovered that, using brain imagery, they could predict with 80% accuracy whether someone was feeling heat pain or not.

Mackey finally published a paper about the experiment. So did his findings influence any court decisions? No. I get asked by attorneys, and I always say, There is no place for this in the courtroom in 2016 and there wont be in 2020. People want to push us into saying this is an objective biomarker for detecting that someones in pain. But the research is in carefully controlled laboratory conditions. You cannot generalise about the population as a whole. I told the attorneys, This is too much of a leap. I dont think theres a lot of clinical utility in having a pain-o-meter in a court or in most clinical situations.

Mackey explains the latest thinking about what pain actually is. Now we understand that pain is a balance between ascending information coming from our bodies and descending inhibitory systems from our brains. We call the ascending information nociception from the Latin nocere, to harm or hurt meaning the response of the sensory nervous system to potentially harmful stimuli coming from our periphery, sending signals to the spinal cord and hitting the brain with the perception of pain. The descending systems are inhibitory, or filtering, neurons, which exist to filter out information thats not important, to turn down the ascending signals of hurt. The main purpose of pain is to be the great motivator, to tell you to pay attention, to focus. When the pain lab was started, we had no way of addressing these two dynamic systems, and now we can.

Mackey is immensely proud of his massive CHOIR database which records peoples pain tolerance levels and how they are affected by treatment and has made it freely available to other pain clinics as a community source platform, collaborating with academic medical centres nationwide so that a rising tide elevates all boats. But he is also humble enough to admit that science cannot tell us which are the sites of the bodys worst pains.

Back pain is the most reported pain at 28%, but I know theres a higher density of nerve fibres in the hands, face, genitals and feet than in other areas, Mackey says, and there are conditions where the sufferer has committed suicide to get away from the pain. Things like post-herpetic neuralgia, that burning nerve pain that occurs after an outbreak of shingles and is horrific; another is cluster headaches some patients have thought about taking a drill to their heads to make it stop.

Like Irene Tracey, Mackey is enthusiastic about the rise of transcranial magnetic stimulation (Imagine hooking a nine-volt battery across your scalp) but, when asked about his particular successes, he talks about simple solutions. Early on in my career, I used to be very focused on the peripheral, the apparent site of the pain. I was doing interventions, and some people would get better but a lot wouldnt. So I started listening to their fears and anxieties and working on those, and became very brain-focused. I noticed that if you have a nerve trapped in your knee, your whole leg could be on fire, but if you apply a local anaesthetic there, it could abolish it.

This young woman came to me with a terrible burning sensation in her hand. It was always swollen; she couldnt stand anyone touching it because it felt like a blowtorch. Mackey noticed that she had a post-operative scar from prior surgery for carpal-tunnel syndrome. Speculating that this was at the root of her problem, he injected botulinum toxin, a muscle relaxant, at the site of the scar. A week later, she came up and gave me this huge hug and said, I was able to pick up my child for the first time in two years. I havent been able to since she was born. All the swelling was gone. It taught me that its not all about the body part, and not all about the brain. Its about both.

Main illustration by Matthew Richardson

This is an edited version of an article that appears on Mosaic. It is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

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