Sensory Medications
The body…
Denied its orchestra,
becomes a mausoleum of muted instruments.
No scent of rain to stir the lungs,
no texture of bark to remind the skin it’s alive,
just the echo of a heartbeat trying to remember its tempo
in a room where silence is not peace, but punishment.
Eyes…
Starve in the absence of light,
like wolves pacing in a cave,
searching for the moon’s forgotten face.
Ears…
Fold inward, hearing only the hum of blood
like a distant engine idling in the dark.
Taste…
Becomes myth, a ghost of salt and citrus
that once danced on the tongue like lovers in summer.
Touch…
The most honest of senses wilts without friction,
no wind, no warmth, no weight.
The body begins to forget its own edges,
as if it were dissolving into the air it cannot feel.
Deprivation is not stillness, it is erosion,
a slow unthreading of the soul from its vessel.
However, when your spinal cord is injured. Many senses below the head have difficulty communicating with our wonderful brains telling us what's going on down there. If the brain misinterpret what it's getting, the results can be quite debilitating in themselves.
I get autonomic reflexia when my brain perceives urination as a great danger, elevating my blood pressure to the level of stroke or heart failure, causing excessive sweating, and sometimes, a feeling like I would like to get out of my body if I could. When an EMT perceives it as shock, the condition is much worse.
Also, a very slight irritation can turn into very painful spasms like the famous athletic charlie horse unless attended to. Often dealt with by strong drugs allowing the mind to ignore what is really going on.
Ron