photo credit: *MarS

For those of you that don’t know, I have a tumor on my liver.  It sucks, but as the politicians would say, it is what it is.

When this thing was diagnosed (I’ll write about how that came about soon) I spent a few days in the hospital.  Pain goes along with it, but it only hurt when I laughed, or yawned, or coughed, or took a deep breath, or rolled over.  Actually, anything that involved moving my diaphragm hurt like hell.  That would be in addition to the pain that just sat there and aggravated the hell out of me.

The doctors, aiming always to please, were nice enough to prescribe morphine almost on demand. It’s a good thing I was only there for 4 days; it would have been easy for my brain firing and wiring to start expecting it all the time. I would have preferred Dilaudid, but who am I to complain?  I could get it every four hours and my philosophy has always been never to turn down an opiate when there is a legitimate reason to get it.  This was legitimate, believe me.

Unfortunately, I carry enough of that old drug addict guilt around that I would actually wait much longer than the four hours most of the time.  I didn’t want them getting the idea that I was being greedy.  On the other hand, I did (do, I have to remind myself of this) have something that could cause me to croak.

My frustration was the protocol set up around the medication. I know it was standard operating procedure, but nonetheless, it got old.  They always had to go through this routine where they ask how much it hurt. It wasn’t as complicated as retailers trying to make money on black Friday, but being creative can be tiring.

“How would you rate your pain on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain possible, and 1 being minimal pain?”

Okay, so what are they trying to do here? If 10 is the worst pain you could possibly feel, how would you know that a certain pain was the worst it could possibly be?  Couldn’t it always get worse?  That would automatically eliminate 10, wouldn’t it? On the other end, what would be the lowest level of acceptable pain?  If I say one, even after the drugs, is that really true? Not exactly.  How about 4?  Is that quite a bit?  Or is that just a little bit? What’s bearable? If it were up to me, the pain would, I imagine, have to go to about a -5.  Then you’re getting into an enjoyable range.  It would probably be too much fun, and then they would cut your butt off the meds.

Then came the second question.

“How would you describe your pain?”

What the hell is a person supposed to do with that? It’s purple? I am not one who could just say it is a terrible ache, and then say that every time. So they force me to keep coming up with new answers.

So, how do you rate your pain from 1 to 10?

“I’ll call your 10, and raise you 3 more.”  A little cocky, maybe?

“Well, there’s a steady high pressure area of about 8, but there are gusts up to about 12.”  They laughed at that one, but only the first time.

I was faced with not being to jocular, or they would decide it didn’t hurt enough.

Then, the second question – How would you describe your pain? I quickly got tired of telling them it felt like someone was stabbing me every time I moved my diaphragm, so I tried to get creative.

“It feels like the space shuttle is making a landing inside my rib cage.”  Liked that one.

“Like Britney Spears and Madonna are having a dance-off on my liver.  With very high heels. And Beyonce’s up next.”

At least my brain got a workout while I was laying there in a hospital bed, with aids coming up every 3-4 hours like vampires on demand, sucking blood for every reason imaginable.  I was glad to have the nurses come in almost as often to put a little something back.