On Pain

The last time was at St. Francis (for myself)in
2008 for an exploded ovarian cyst. At the time of rupture,
sitting on a toilet of course, i thought it was the
beginning of my monthly cramps. A few moments later it
was obvious this pain was something different.
As i shuffled out the bathroom with this intense pain,
constantly throbbing, slowly curling me into an upright
fetal position or as i would like to call it-- the grandma
with osteoarthritis- i told my bf to take me to the ER.
Normally he'd be skeptical and annoyed but this time the
"i'm not fucking around" look on my face made him move
pretty quickly.

so i get to the ER and i have to fill out a bunch of paperwork
which sucks but i'm admitted almost immediately because the look
on my face said "i'm not fucking around". A pasty ass face,
dilated eyes and cold sweating cannot be faked. Almost
immediately my nurse asks me, "are you pregnant?" Answer "No."
"Are you sure you're not pregnant?" Emphatically, " No!"
Nurse: We'll take a pregnancy test anyway, I'm going to need
a urine sample." Wait, my head is starting to hurt
"We're gonna take a urine sample?"
She'd better be holding my hand.

So after an hour and a half and my urine sample indeed corroborates
my story that i am not in fact not pregnant, the next line of
query is "Have you been doing any drugs?" Answer, emphatically "NO!"
"Please, we need to know if you've taken anything...blah blah blah"
This is really starting to annoy me. This line of questioning
stops once my blood work comes in an hour later and it's obvious
that i'm just in a lot of pain, something that's causing my
white blood cells to be sky high.

Then comes the 20K question, "How much pain are you in?"
Answer, "UhaA lot of pain?"
Apparently i was to use my non- existent elocution abilities to
describe the pain or perhaps i was to lose a bit of
control and cry like a girl to explain this pain. i could do neither.
So then we played the number game, "On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the least
and 10 being the worst, how much pain are you in?"
Answer, " It's an eight". This number of course means nothing
to my nurse who's probably seen people with broken limbs come in
and say their pain is a five.

My invisible wounds cannot be quantified-- so much for empathy.

Solution: A liter of yellow dye that tastes like lemonade,
four MRI scans that show an explosion by the left ovary,
and lots of painkillers.

So i come to the point of this long ass blog and embarrassing
story to say that i fucking hate being in pain.
Pain is acute, sharp, blunt, dull, stupefying, blinding but mostly
isolating. There are no meters or stress tests to show
how much pain a person is in. Despite the cliché "I feel your pain"
we cannot feel each other's pain. Some people cannot even
begin to fathom or consider another person's feelings much
less "their pain". Platitudes are especially annoying when
one is in pain, "You'll get through this. We've all gone through
it. I know how you're feeling." There's nothing like
physical or mental pain to make you realize how truly lonely you are.