BTW.... I finally opened my package.
While doing all this teasing, you ought to consider how fast a man can move when he's clutching an IV bag and hopping on one leg.
I understand your sentiment - but I am in pain.
.... and I am so f@%$@@&*^^ing over it.
I've had cellulitis, it's not fun.
Pain's a funny thing. Not many people realise that there are three varieties of pain killers, ones like aspirin, paracetamol and the like that actually cut off pain at the source - they interfere with the signalling pathways so that the pain nerves never get a signal to send in the first places. Then there's depolarising anaesthetics like cocaine and lidocaine that actually interfere with the pain nerves ability to send a signal, effectively switching off electrical activity in the nerve. Then there's a whole class of drugs like the opioids and ketamine that alter the way you brain processes the pain - you still feel the pain, but you feel differently about the pain.
So, where am I going with this? I've got osteoarthritis in both knees, it showed up when I was comparatively young for the phenomenon. The most useful thing the doctors did for me was send me to see a physiotherapist and I lucked out with getting a really good one. His strategy was for me to do exercises to improve the support that all the surrounding muscles give to the knees. All fine and dandy in theory, but the problem was that doing the exercises was painful, very painful, more painful than just hobbling around with the osteoarthritis in the first place. The point he made was that although it hurt, the pain wasn't an indication that I was doing more damage and that if I persisted eventually the exercises would do their job and I'd feel less pain. He was right in that, but more importantly it taught me to think of the pain differently and strangely that different perception caused the pain to still be there but I felt different about it and that made it better.
When I started the physiotherapy I couldn't handle going down stairs without two handholds and taking it a single step at a time, slowly - perhaps 30-60 seconds for a short flight. Nowadays I'm still not running down stairs the way i used to, but I can walk down them reasonably normally without handholds. It still hurts, but it doesn't hurt in the way it used to and I'm able to largely ignore the pain.
We have endogenous opioids, we can make our own internal drugs that produce pain relief just the same way that morphine, opium, heroin and all their cousins do. They seem to get released almost consciously, when we choose to engage with the pain rather than avoid it. The aforementioned synthetic drugs reply on the existence of the receptors for endogenous opioids to be able to do their work. Airy-fairy that it might sound, you really can make a big difference to the way pain affects you by the way that you engage with it mentally. I think the mind-set to adopt is that you're bloody well going to fight the pain rather than let it get you down. It's not "manning up" and pretending the pain isn't there, no macho crap like that, but accepting the pain, once you do it doesn't seem so bad. It doesn't make it go away, but just makes it more bearable. My experience anyway.
Edit: Hah! You should be careful what you say. I just got up to go to the kitchen for a snack and for the first time in ages I was conscious of the crunching sound and the pain from my right knee as I stood up.