The Mysterious Leg Pain That Wouldn’t Go Away

Some years ago I noticed a pain in my outer thigh, as if I had been hit with a “ball peen” hammer. “I feel like I’ve been hit with a ‘ball peen’ hammer,” I thought.

This would have made perfect sense, except I had not been hit with a “ball peen” nor any other kind of hammer, nor had I received any injury in that spot on my leg, at all, that I could possibly remember. There was no bruise. Yet the pain wouldn’t go away. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night it hurt so much.

As was my mode with such things, I let it go for a while, until the fact that It wouldn’t go away became more annoying than the pain itself.

“How long has this been bothering you?” my darling wife asked, when I told her about it.

“A month or so.”

“A MONTH? You’ve been in pain for a month and you didn’t SAY anything? Why not?” she demanded, in her darling, alarmed way (subtext: “I’m going to hurt you!”).

“I dunno,” was my perfectly lucid explanation.

I made an appointment to see a doctor. I can’t remember what kind of doctor he was, besides the “overweight with poor complexion” kind. I explained my pain, he gave me a cortisone shot, which hurt, and the original pain didn’t go away. Neither did his bills, which kept coming months after I had paid.

“Never agree to be treated by a doctor who looks worse than you do,” was my Confucius-like wife’s advice. Meanwhile I began to wonder if my leg pain indicated some kind of life-threatening blood clot or what the hell.

One day we were at a health food store that had a natural healing book section. For I-don’t-know-what reason, one on Chinese medicine caught my eye. On the cover was a map of the meridians (channels through which chi—“life force” flow).

On this map, I noticed a dot on the exact spot my leg hurt—right, outer, middle thigh—labeled “GB 31.” The index told me GB 31 corresponds to “Gall Bladder.”

“What does the gall bladder do?” I asked Mrs. Right, and showed her the meridian map.

“It processes fats.” I had been eating way too many fried foods lately, not eating enough water, and my tongue was black (a symptom which is only good if you’re a Chow Chow).

“You know any herbs that are good for gall bladder?” I asked Mrs. Confucius. We looked this up in another book. Wild Yam and Fennel were recommended. I started taking them right away, laid off the Lays, and the pain went away.