Mets day 26 - Pain

Jennifer left the hospital at about 9:30 pm last night. My recovery from the surgery had so far feel very good, and it appeared that I would be discharged ahead of schedule. We were looking forward to Tuesday: I would have my stents and abdominal drain removed, and I would be released to a quiet and calm place and get some rest. I was told to expect a blood draw between 10 pm and midnight, and vitals check every 4 hours. There was nothing worth watching on the tv, so I shut down the lights and tried to doze.

At 10:30 pm, I started to adjust the position of my bed and immediately felt an excruciating pain shooting from my central incision, across the incision point for the SPT tube, and ending on my left side. It was like several thousand volts of electrical current was constantly passing through that part of my body. (I've been shocked several times by 120 volts, and this was far more intense and constant). The pain was sudden, intense, and unexpected. I fumbled in the darkness for the nurse call button and yelled at the answering station to send him in immediately. I continued to writhe in agony, moaning and twisting my torso to try to escape. When my nurse did not appear after what I deemed a sufficient time (it felt like 5 minutes but was probably closer to 30 seconds) I punched the call button again and said I was at 9 or 10 on the pain scale, and needed relief immediately.

Rafael, my nurse for the night, came in soon thereafter and tried to assess what was going on. It's hard to communicate cogently when you are constantly groaning, writhing, you are sweating profusely from every pore, your teeth are chattering, and you feel that you are tied to the tracks and all you can see is the oncoming glare of the train of pain. Under the circumstances, I think I did quite well, explaining in short, simple words and at a volume that would not be mistaken for a whisper that I needed an immediate shot of something - anything - to make the pain go away. Raphael seemed to be concerned with other unimportant things, like trying to find out what was causing the pain, and whether he could use my port to give me a shot. I argued somewhat passionately that all of those things were secondary to getting me some immediate relief. Eventually, Rafael and I reached an understanding, and he gave me an elephantine shot of morphine through my port, as well as my regular two Vicodin pills.

Those 15 minutes of so between the initial attack and the morphine dulling my senses have given me a totally new perspective on pain. From time to time in my life, I have felt intense physical pain - when I broke my leg on my motorcycle at age 18, or shredded my left ankle at age 14 when a bunch of barbed wire wrapped around my ATV foot peg and ankle. But I generally have avoided taking pain medications, such as Tylenol or Advil, since I generally have not needed them. But now, having had every fiber of my being racked with such intense pain that I could think of nothing other than escaping it, even if it meant dying, I now respect and fear pain in a way that I never did before.

I'm still processing what it means to me, and how it will change my life. Having felt what that unknown thing can do to me, I fear what I would do, or what my family would do, should it happen again. I talked with Rafael abut it at 4:30 am, when it was time for my next round of Vicodin. I wanted to stay ahead of the pain, but I did not want to risk addiction to pain meds. Raphael sensibly counseled me to take the damn pills and worry about the future later. The doctors, by the way, treated it as no big deal during their morning rounds, and assured my that it probably would not happen again. Yeah, right. They don't even know what caused it.