Victoria has pains. Perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for each one. Maybe each abdominal pain, each migraine, each painful experience without apparent injury … maybe I am wrong and perhaps there is something there that we don’t have the fidelity or understanding to identify as a source of nociception every time. Maybe not.
This afternoon Victoria had her annual physical. Her pediatric physician had an uncanny ability to blame the stomach complaints on stress, foot pains on soft-tissue strains, and – most annoyingly – headaches on dehydration.
You see, Victoria probably doesn’t drink enough water. No one drinks enough water. Her physician doesn’t even drink enough water. By her physician’s account, if Victoria drinks more her headaches will disappear. Perhaps they will; they probably won’t.
I wanted to inquire how she reasoned that everyone drinks too few fluids, yet only a small group of people get headaches, and how she could believe that drinking more water is necessarily the solution. I didn’t, though. I just politely nodded.