About a year ago, I was suffering from terrible headaches and pain deep in my ear canal, as well as tinnitus and pain radiating from below my ear down the back of my neck and along my jaw. The pain was never there when I woke up, but would flare up in mid-morning and last the entire day, sometimes making it difficult to go to sleep. I put up with this for a month or so, swallowed lots of acetaminophen, and waited for the pain to go away. But it didn't. I went to the doctor when I could hear the phantom whining in my ears over the television.

"Hello!" said the doctor, a sharp-looking guy in his early thirties. "Wow! Great specs! Mind if I try them on?" He took my glasses and mugged in front of a mirror. "How do they look?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "You have my glasses."

I described my symptoms. He looked in my ears and exclaimed over the scar tissue marring my eardrums. (I had a lot of ear infections as a kid.) He grabbed a piece of paper and drew me a picture of my eardrum. "And here," he said, scribbling with great enthusiasm, "you have a chunk of scar tissue that looks like Portugal."

He told me that he didn't think I had a brain tumor, and that when young people have headaches the problem is nearly always stress. I told him that it was good to hear that I didn't have a brain tumor, and even better to hear that I'm still considered a young person.

He laughed. "Have you changed anything in your routine recently?"

"I started a new job a couple of months ago," I said, "and I stopped running at about that same time."

He nodded, told me that I needed to start running again for stress relief, and that was all. I paid a $20 co-pay so an M.D. could tell me the same thing I could have learned by watching a Richard Simmons videotape. I went back to running 25 miles a week and the headaches, earaches, and tinnitus disappeared almost immediately.

There's no funny wrap-up or punchline here. I just think it's strange that for me, vigorous exercise is not a healthful lifestyle choice but a necessary strategy for me to avoid chronic, debilitating pain. So when you see me running through Denver's Washington Park, remember that I probably don't want to be there. It's just that I don't have a fucking choice.

+posted by Lawrence @ 12/02/2003 11:38:00 PM