Pain

Let’s talk about pain for a moment, shall we? It’s a subject that is foremost on my mind at the moment – the reason for which I shall explain in a moment.

If you’ve been following my exploits on this blog lately you probably know that I (apparently) have acid reflux disease. This disease is described by the mass media as “frequent heartburn,” but that doesn’t do it justice. (Or it may just indicate that I have some other, similar affliction… but I digress.)

Last night I had an “acid attack,” as I call it. It started at around 2:30am, and quickly blossomed in to a full-on attack, complete with the burning, peircing pain in my central chest/abdomen (just below the last pair of joined ribs), and the unbearable tightness of the muscles in my lower back. To make things more entertaining, rather than fading away after about 20 minutes (which is a long freaking time when you’re in this kind of pain, let me tell you), the attack lasted for 2 hours. Around 4:30am I was able to tolerate lying down, but there was still a residual burning, aching pain in the center of my abdomen (as opposed to the sharper pain of the actual attack). Because of this, I was not able to get back to sleep until 7am.

It’s now 11am, and there’s still a dull ache in that spot in my body – and of course, I’m tired as all hell, barely able to string together the thoughts necessary to write this. (Needless to say I called in sick to work.) The magnitude of all this is lost unless you understand the intensity of the pain that accompanies one of these “attacks.”

Most people can withstand a fair amount of pain. A cut on your hand won’t keep you from sleeping; a pulled muscle won’t send you into convulsions; a headache might keep you from working if it’s really bad (i.e. sinus headache), but you can probably lie down and go to sleep to get rid of it.

Not so with an acid attack. The pain from these things strikes deep into the most sensitive part of your body – your inner organs. If you’ve ever had food poisoning, you know how intense stomach pain can be, and how debilitating it is when it’s really bad. Well, these acid attacks are really bad. And they strike at a most vulnerable time – late at night, when all you want to do is go to sleep, but you can’t because the pain won’t let you. It’s enough to reduce a grown man to tears.

I think I’ll paraphrase Winston Smith from the book 1984 by saying that most people think they can handle severe pain, but the truth is that pain is the great equalizer. The great hero and the weakest child are equally humbled by severe pain. No one wants pain to continue. When you’re in pain, all you want is for the pain to stop – and you will do anything to stop the pain.

With that in mind, I’m going to go lie down for a while, and hope that this residual pain fades, so I can get back to my life (i.e. my work).