Pins ‘n Needles

I hate waking up with one of my limbs suffering with pins and needles. Last night, or should I say this morning, I awoke to this odd hot and cold sensation when I realised that I was lying on my left arm. My head was a little hazy at first and thought that I’d grown an extra arm or something but then the pins and needles started or that was when I noticed it. I winced and then I grimaced until finally I was biting my pillow and wailing slightly. It wasn’t all pain but feeling fragile around 4am in the morning exacerbated the sensation. Finally after a couple of minutes that warm prickly feeling started to subdue. It didn’t completely go but it was a bit more tolerable so it then left me with the next issue, an arm that did not do much.

It was twisted in a locked position and did not feel part of me. With my right hand I flicked it but could not feel a thing. I pinched it next and still there was nothing. I started to wonder whether I’d slept on it for so long that it was dead and would spend my remaining years hanging and swinging by my left side. Not so, at last after pinching and then twisting the skin I finally felt something. It was faint but at least the worry that it had gone to sleep forever had evaporated.

The next stage was to try and move it. There was no response when I tried to bend it. Instead I just lay there staring at my arm contemptuously because it was depriving me of sleep. I turned my body so I was now on my side and in doing so my arm moved but it was like carrying a dead weight and just slapped my chest before landing on to the bed. I even started to play with it, picking it up by the wrist and then dropping it like they used to do in WWF when the referee was checking to see if Hulk Hogan was still conscious. My arm just flopped on to the bed without emotion. It was almost like playing with a toy. I even pulled it up high and let go causing it to hit the bed then bounce up and slap me on the nose.

It was only when I kept my arm lifted for over thirty seconds that I it started to feel it again. Elated that the thing was finally sorting out its circulation I placed it hanging over my bed thinking that this is what would stimulate the circulation even more so. After a couple of minutes I felt this rush of energy run through my arm and suddenly my fingers were moving and the pins and needles were gone. I sighed in relief to have my arm back, like a friend you hadn’t seen in a while. You want to catch up but after a while the novelty where’s off. And it did for me as sleep finally took over and I closed my eyes making sure to keep in the same position so as not to find myself in the same situation again.

In other news Kerouac’s scroll is in England. It is currently residing in the University of Birmingham and I plan to have a look.