Badass Ice Chest of Badassery

Normally when I think about a badass ice chest, I think of the one that my friends Bill and Aaron bring with them to parties. These guys are serious beer drinkers. They don't like to worry about the selection and quantity of beer that will be at the party or whether there will be enough room in the fridge to store their stash, so they just take care of both problems themselves. Whenever these guys come rolling in, you can be sure that one of them will be pulling their badass ice chest along behind them (it's got wheels, yo) and that it will be packed with an ice cold assortment. Theirs is a badass ice chest indeed.

But that's not the badass ice chest I'm talking about here.

My wife started out the new year by letting some doctor cut open her shoulder and saw on her bones. Her shoulder had been hurting her for well over a year or something, and it's still hurting her now, except  now it's hurting because it's recovering from surgery and not because her shit's all fucked up. At least that's the hope. That's what we're paying you for, Dr. Shoulder Scraper.

To help manage the pain of her recovery, our insurance was kind enough to pay for this neat little ice chest contraption that, while not wheeled or filled with beer or even very large, is pretty badass in its own way. Its sole purpose is to pump ice cold water into a pad that can be placed atop an injured area of a person's body. Check it out in action:

"The fuck are you doing?" was the question I had to answer of my wife right before I took this picture. "Don't worry, I won't include your head," I assured her. It's not that my wife is not beautiful because she is, but a period of surgery recovery is not a person's most attractive time. You're all tired and drugged and worn-out and slow-moving. An attitude of "fuck it" pervades all but the most essential hygiene-oriented tasks. You're doing good to get a shower. Flannel becomes like, the most wonderful fabric ever.

As you can see, this ice chest would not hold a lot of beer, but it does hold significant powers of pain relief. For the first few days after surgery, I was filling it and refilling it with a fresh load of ice and water several times a day, along with fetching pills, keeping everybody fed, reasonably clean, clothed, entertained. Oh, and trying to get some work-work done. Yay for working from home. Lucky for us, we've gotten a lot of help from family. Somewhere in there I turned 35. I had a brief episode of depression inspired by feeling like I haven't accomplished enough with my life, got mostly over it, then went and made dinner.

Here's hoping this is the most pain we suffer all year.