Pump Up the Jam

Theme songs for pain management

Have you watched Cunk on Earth yet? It’s a British mockumentary television series that follows host Philomena Cunk as she tells the story of humanity’s greatest inventions. She gathers information from academic experts and then questions their positions with personal anecdotes: “Well my mate Paul says…”

Truth-telling under the guise of straight-faced humour.

Randomly, in the midst of each episode, Cunk directs the audience’s attention to Belgian techno anthem “Pump Up the Jam.” One Vulture article describes the repeated episodic segue as “the show's go-to benchmark for the measurement of time.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about time this week. That’s what happens when you’ve had a couple of really bad sleeps courtesy of chronic pain. Such pain is an alarm clock that won’t shut off.

11 years ago I got sick. I was hospitalized with a high fever and a body-altering infection that different specialists spent years trying to name. I ended up having surgery on my right leg in an attempt to mitigate the damage done by what turns out to be a chronic blood clot condition. My son was born a year and a half after my hospitalization and has only known me this way: legs of different sizes, compression tights to keep the clots under control. He often wears mismatched socks like his mom. In solidarity. 

Inspired by the bad reality television series that is my right leg I’m thinking about going full 80s dj. I need my own episodic dance segue to interrupt the measurement of time, especially in the wee hours of the night.

Before I got sick I was Cunk-esque about pain. About disability. I would ask big sweeping (and sometimes stupid) questions, stumbling my way towards knowledge. And for years as a teacher — at a theoretical level — I was superficially aware of our ableist world. But personal experience is a game changer. 

Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash

My body changed, my wardrobe options shifted, my daily life altered. I learned that workplace harassment can feel like tiny sharp pokes, constant and impossible to avoid. Like when equity-espousing administrators couldn’t support my need to keep my leg elevated. Or the exhaustion that accompanied the constant and never totally believed explanation of pain.

More than a decade of bad sleeps later I now know a truth that no outside expert need explain to me. Pain is a measurement of time.

Granted it’s always easier to search for alternative segues in the morning.

I’ll let you know when I find my song.