{"id":264,"date":"2023-08-09T22:10:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T22:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/?page_id=264"},"modified":"2023-08-09T22:10:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T22:10:30","slug":"frozen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/?page_id=264","title":{"rendered":"Frozen"},"content":{"rendered":"

10.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember when this began? So small; innocuous. Like many things. Like many problems. I smashed my finger in the car door when my sister slammed it on our way out of the car. Just the top of the finger, but it was pretty bad. Hurt like hell, too. Mom had a freeze-pen in her purse, pulled it out, dialed it down to 2 and gave me three seconds of relief, followed by days of nothing. No feeling in the finger.\u00a0 The doctor was in no hurry to do anything about it. By that time, they could wait longer on everything.\u00a0 This all started because some guy, somewhere, hurt his something-or-other and had nothing but ice\u2013spray-ice\u2013handy to help him until he could get to the doctor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pretty soon, the idea spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

9.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t too long before all the big ones were freezing, too. Any large injury, traffic accident, grisly animal attack, paramedics would freeze it in the field and the person would be pain-free, admittedly sometimes limb-free, as well, until doctors could figure out what to do with it. Weird, but not too different from what they had already been doing with organs when whisked from the scene of death, moments after declaration of death, as long as the organ donor box was checked.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

8.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think it was a basketball player.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Maybe a football player (possibly a futbol player?) who first had the idea to use it on the court, or field, or pitch. Those somewhat-gruesome injuries like rolled ankles and knee twists. The ones that happened fast enough that we could not see the real hurt, at least until all the networks slowed it down in, like, 5D hi-def so we could watch the break. Not for sprains, but major injuries. Sort of like the car wrecks or the workplace accidents.\u00a0 No one could fault them for that.\u00a0 Ease some of their pain and get them to the training room or, better yet, the hospital. They would end up there anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the first time I think people started paying attention to it; after the sporting events. That was about when I started seeing smaller tubes of freeze-spray advertised. Still, like original computers and DVD players and phones, only the elite could afford those tubes. Enough of those money elites were the weekend-warrior-types, so they would get some near-ghastly injury and be able to self-spray while waiting for help.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seemed like there were just a bunch of infomercials, at first. You know, hocking goods that were so out of our reach we might as well have been watching high-end auctions. Those tubes to the highest bidders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That came much later.<\/span><\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t really think any of that would catch on. Just like any other fad. Hospitals started using the freeze spray more often, which was a good thing for those people in pain. For one thing, it immediately reduced the relapse of opioid addiction patients.\u00a0 They could just freeze whatever part that originally caused their pain. Most other addictions faded away with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it was some celebrity\u2019s social feed that brought it up again. I really thought it had faded away. Become just another treatment for hospitals and doctors. Medical insurance companies didn\u2019t want to cover it anyway, and wouldn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

At least until they secretly picked up a monopoly on the practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then it was OK.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, this celebrity or wannabe or whatever, put it out there that he or she was using it for this or that, and it wasn\u2019t even for a real injury. Just like treatment of stuff that kind of happens. You know, like people used to take pain pills and those NSAIDs for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, I know, those went away quick, huh?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leave it to us to follow the lead of some tow-headed, vapid pseudo-celeb shilling something on some live chat or homebrew channel. The good thing that came out of all the increase in demand was that the price came way down. Simple economics, people. Companies suddenly found that, yes, they COULD manufacture this freeze-spray much cheaper. It could, in fact, be available to the masses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that person became like a prophet, or whatever.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, it wasn\u2019t long before athletes started thinking like those celebrities. By then, the celebrities were using to freeze wrinkles, blemishes,\u00a0 acne, moles, anything they could freeze. That was about the time I started hearing rumors about some celebrities fully freezing themselves and getting stored in an underground warehouse somewhere in Utah, waiting out the worst of all these changes to the planet. I mean, for real, who is gonna dig them up?\u00a0 The frenzy that came next was so overwhelming, it only makes sense if you know anything about the stupidity across human history.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professional athletes started freezing parts before games and matches, which seemed like a good idea.\u00a0 Until some of those parts started breaking off during competitions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, weird!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Funny thing is, it became so commonplace, that it got weirder to watch a game where it didn\u2019t happen. Then, the problem of what to do with those broken-off parts? It would not surprise you to know that they just froze them; worried about how to put them all back together later.\u00a0 Then, those same weekend-warriors started on the pre-freezing too, though their results were never quite as good.\u00a0 The reattachments that did happen didn\u2019t seem to take very well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not long until office buildings where these people used to work were full of frozen parts, while we waited for the reattachment technology to catch up. Interesting how the demand for THAT didn\u2019t cause the same kind of rush as the original demand for the freeze tubes.\u00a0 By then, it was weird to go anywhere and see someone with all of their parts. Like they were some kind of unicorn, or something.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1.<\/span><\/p>\n

And, so here we are now, just kind of waiting. I mean, someday there will be someone who will figure this out, right? I don\u2019t think everyone has frozen off all parts yet, right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ugh, it is so damn cold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have to stop typ<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10. Remember when this began? So small; innocuous. Like many things. Like many problems. I smashed my finger in the car door when my sister slammed it on our way out of the car. Just the top of the finger, but it was pretty bad. Hurt like hell, too. Mom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":191,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-264","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264\/revisions\/265"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}