The Pain Crucible

At 7:59 AM on April 15 I was absolutely fine, checking on a quick question for Annette before seeing my first patient of the day.

At 8:00 AM on April 15 I was writhing on the floor in severe abdominal pain.  The intensity was what we tend to think of as 10 on a scale of 1 to 10; yet Pain- I henceforth use the word as a proper noun- was just getting started with me.  Like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, his real work was yet to come.  We found out what happened much, much later.

 

It turns out that I had two issues:

 

-A “horseshoe kidney” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_kidney) which can predispose towards various kinds of trouble.

 

-A single kidney stone.

 

I had no prior knowledge of either condition.  What happened was, at 8:00 AM the kidney stone lodged in my kidney’s exit duct and blocked the flow of urine.  But of course my loyal kidneys were still busily cleansing my body of toxins and metabolic byproducts; they are such devoted little chaps.  So then, with nowhere for the liquid to go, the pressure built up and, well, the calyx, the kidney’s outer shell, ruptured.

 

Yup.  My left kidney essentially blew up, right inside of me.

 

The EMT guys, suspecting kidney stone issues, placed an IV line so that in the ER I could get pain meds as fast as possible.  For reasons that I do not understand at all, it was about four hours until I received IV pain medication.  To be fair, this is counting from the onset of the problem; still, only about half an hour was used up in the 911 call and transport- Philly Emergency Services rock.  Busy ER's, apparently, do not.

 

Our team was so great too.  Annette, Reese, Helen and Maryanne were there at the time and took such good care of me.  Add in Barry and Pat and you have a crew like no other, which has held things together beautifully in my absence...

 

Pain, astonishing as he was initially, continued to increase his torture.  It reminded me of that scene in 1984 where O’Brien has Winston in that pain machine and just keeps increasing the intensity to higher and more incomprehensible levels.  That’s just it- I stopped being able to comprehend what was happening.  Pain robbed me of all my reason.  I was reduced to being an animal, crying out loudly and uselessly.  Mostly in fact the whole universe so far as I could tell consisted only of me and Pain locked in battle.  Everything else had ceased to exist.  You’d think in these situations that you’d want to win, to heroically triumph over your malicious, malevolent enemy.  I found the opposite to be true- I wanted Pain to win.   I would have been quite happy, I’m sorry to admit, if Pain had gone and killed me.  Anything to end his hold over me…

 

Finally, finally they gave me morphine- with almost no effect!  Back into grasping despair, except that then they gave me Dilaudid, a morphine derivative, and it brought sweet, delicious relief.

 

My wife Michelle was bravely by my side during most of this time.  It must have been so hard on her to see me suffer so…  I was aware of her presence; at times we held hands and I reached over to her mentally when I had a little extra awareness but most of my resources were just quite simply occupied with Pain.  Ah, there is no better spouse than Michelle; in the recovery period she has struck an excellent balance between concern and setting strict limits so that I don’t cause any setbacks by doing too much.

 

Similarly, people often reach out to God at times of such intense struggle and stress.  I had the great fortune to speak to the eminent theologian Dr. Ron Sider about my experience, just a week afterwards.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Sider)  Dr. Sider asked me if I had prayed during this time.  I answered that I did, but my prayers were pretty much formless; perhaps like the word “Pleeeease” stretched out in time.  Dr. Sider replied in his kindly way that at that moment, God was probably more concerned with my intent than with my eloquence.  Wise words!

 

The doctors and nurses were excellent, the treatment non-invasive.  Kidneys, in addition to being quite loyal to their owners (and they put up with a lot from us, I'll wager), are very resourceful fellows and heal very nicely, even when injured to this degree.

 

This experience has left me changed.  I’m not sure how yet, and I make no value judgment at this point either.  But I do feel different, somehow, after this encounter with Pain; whatever else it may have been, it was a transformative experience.

 

One that I would oh so happily have avoided if I could…

 

Comments

[Angela Lussier]

Rick,
I just attended my first spoken word poetry show and as I was reading your blog, it made me think that this would be a great performance piece. You captured the essence of pain so well, MY kidneys were responding! I hope that you are recovering and taking it easy, this sounds like a life-changing event. When you're back at it, look for a stage for this piece - you've got something here!

[Tom Bentley]

Rick, all I can say is ARGGGHH, OOOHHHH, EEEEEYOWWWWWW! The photo of your molten kidney is very telling. Man, that sounds like a hallucinatory experience—I have much more respect for kidney demons now. Intense pain can be one of those clarifying feelings—afterwards. During, good grief!

I'm hoping you're feeling MUCH better.

(By the way, Dilaudid is very good for a mild headache too.)

[Craig Akabak]

I'm relieved that you survived and glad you were so eloquently able to describe your experience.

[Rick Wilson DMD]

Thanks, all. I'm pleased that three such talented people like my writing!