Yudhijit Bhattacharjee has been a contributing
writer since 2017. He is the author of a nonfiction
thriller, The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell. David
Guttenfelder, Robert Clark, Robin Hammond,
and Craig Cutler are frequent contributors.
Mark Thiessen is a staff photographer.women. We arranged our chairs in a circle and
sat down. Resting his cane against a table, Norris
settled into his seat and asked the members to
share how things had been going for them.
Brian, who suffers from severe abdominal
pain that doctors haven’t been able to diagnose,
was the first to speak. He described going to a
jujitsu class, which he said helped him tempo-
rarily forget his pain. “It’s sad that I have to cause
myself other pain to forget this one,” he laughed.
“I thought of all you guys throughout the week.
It made me feel better.”
The members are familiar with each other’s
stories. But they seemed bound by an unspoken
contract to listen to everyone with full attention,
even if they’d heard the same words before. “I
called a suicide hot line today,” a woman named
Jane said. She suffers from fibromyalgia and
complex regional pain syndrome, among other
issues. “I’ve complained to my friends so much
that I don’t want to call them anymore.”
Norris told her and the rest of the group that
he’s just a phone call away. “Sometimes you just
need to scream,” he said. Turning to another
woman in the group who’d admitted earlier to
being reluctant to reach out for support, he said,
“So please, yell.”
When the meeting was over, Norris waited for
everybody to file out of the room before turn-
ing out the lights. I asked what inspired him to
organize the monthly meeting. “I find that my
experiences are often helpful to others,” he said.
But this was just as much about helping himself,
he added. “These meetings help me feel like I
am still a contributing member of society, and
I am not alone in dealing with chronic pain.” jA WORLD OF PAIN 69