If you're really serious about avoiding pain medication, you must learn about and become comfortable with other coping methods, like the rebozo (a type of large cloth traditionally used in Mexican culture), visualization, and
even lesser - known options like
sterile water injections.
One can be as lonely as one wishes, but it is impossible to be alone...
even on the salt and
sterile sea, wait for the calm and lie over the low rail to stare down into the blue glass
water and what at first seems a pure medium begins to dance with motes, darting specks, and down at the threshold of the dark, ominous shadows turn and careen about... it is unbearable to conceive that anything can not have life.»