Thank God For Chicken Pox

“He jests at scars who never felt a wound” Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

You may want to take a seat, this will take a while. This week I have learnt that the best ‘cure’ to Chicken Pox is of course, short nails. The axiom has changed: I have been trapped between an itching skin and a splitting headache. Forget about devils and beep blue seas. So, Tuesday morning, fresh from Bungoma and Trans Nzoia counties where I had invested my Easter break (relax fellow Pharisee, the question here is not whether it is Biblical to have an Easter break!),I notice some small illegal tenants(or squatters) on my skin. I quickly rationalize that the water in Kitale for sure was not ISO certified and so this Nairobi water must be asking it out. For that intellectual slothfulness, I am forever guilty.
 So, I rush to Westlands for my SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) class—there, preachers are not looking for sins to rebuke all the time, we have lives! Needless to say,I did half day and quickly got on the contact group I have named: Fire Fighters. There I have saved doctors’ contacts. And real fire fighters like Lawyers. Then from there it has been a barrage of ideas from the good Acyclovir which according to the manufacturer not only handles Chicken Pox but also does something on some strain of Herpes!) .Acyclovir am told works much like ARVs so that says as much. Then of course Calamine for the itching skin.It is either purple or pink so again, not much to be said. Of course Piriton and Eucalyptus got honorary mentions and am still looking to stroll to the Arboretum for obvious reasons. For sure, before someone recommends Eucalyptus, they should ask where you live. Some day we will leave the cities for the smaller ones. Yes we will.(Cheeky Grin)

 So, of course I switched my focus briefly from The Great Controversy to a book by Dr.Paul Brand & Philip Yancey titled: PAIN, The Gift Nobody Wants. So, when did you last have to endure pain? Am talking about real pain. Forget that episode where your high school crush called you a ‘mushroom’! Real Pain .The kind that gets you awake half the night or forces you to sleep. In the world there are many examples. One of my mentors has quipped:”..the whole creation groans and travails together in pain until now.”
If the Chicken Pox allows we will explore the anatomy of Pain and what its object is.That’s a big IF of course.



Before we consider pain, it may be wise to consider what Dr.Brand calls Nightmares of Painlessness.The good doctor speaks of something he calls:”congenital indifference to pain.”
Consider Tanya’s case:
“A few minutes later I went into Tanya’s room and found her sitting on the floor of the playpen, fingerpainting red swirls on the white plastic sheet…It was horrible. The tip of Tanya’s finger was mangled and bleeding, and it was her own blood she was using to make those designs on the sheets…She grinned at me and that’s when I saw the streaks of blood on her teeth.She had bitten off the tip of her finger and was playing in the blood. Over the next few months, Tanya’s mother…tried in vain to convince their daughter that fingers must not be bitten. The toddler laughed at spankings and other physical threats, and indeed seemed immune to all punishment. To get her way she merely had to lift a finger to her teeth and pretend to bite, and her parents capitulated at once..” Of course Tanya’s father walked away and left her mother a ‘widow’. Tanya’s mother said that at times she would step on a nail and or thumbtack and not bother to pull it out. Tanya was healthy in all respects except one: She couldn’t feel pain. Nerves in her hands and and feet could transmit messages about change in temperature and pressure but these carried no hint of unpleasantness. She lacked any sort of mental construct for pain.
Dr.Brand also speaks of an old man in New Guinea who dipped his hand in red hot coal to remove a piece of yam that had fled for safety in the fire from the cooking pot. Definitely, it is not the intention of this writer to glorify pain. Some pains(the sort that I came to grips with in Bungoma for instance), argues Dr.Brand- the pain of grief or emotional trauma-have no physical stimulus whatsoever. They are states of mind according to him, concocted by the alchemy of the brain. These feats of consciousness make it possible for suffering to linger in the mind long after the body’s need for it has passed. We can cope with pain and even triumph. Says another:” “At times when it seemed that I could not endure the pain, when unable to sleep, I looked to Jesus by faith, and His presence was with me, every shade of darkness rolled away . . . the very room was filled with the light of His divine presence.” Ellen G. White letter 2d, Dec. 23, 1892, in General Conference Daily Bulletin, Feb. 27, 1893. Before we make sense out of all these, let me attend to some itch…