Pain

When I was seventeen, I broke my patella. The details of how aren't really important to the story. But when you see a TV or film drama about a mob enforcer breaking someone's kneecap, believe that it isn't just an overly trite cliché. I've been told the pain ranks up there with childbirth and kidney stones (neither of which I'd know about), or gallstones and shingles (both of which I would). I'd rather have either of those latter two again than break another knee. These days, when I'm asked to rank my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I have a very solid marker for what a 10 feels like. Shock and opiate-based medications can only ease so much.

What I remember most was waking up after surgery. Then, as today, the nurses wake you up, have you roll to one side and cough to make sure you actually come out from under the anesthesia, and to prevent the onset of pneumonia. Twenty-five years ago, they used much more potent anesthesia than they used today, so it was a much greater concern. I'm not sure how long I was under, but I know it takes time to wire a kneecap back together. Not even with titanium like they would use today, just good, old-fashioned, American stainless steel.

The first time the nurses roused me, I only remember feeling as though I didn't want to wake up. These Nightingales were professionals, and quite persistent, much to my annoyance. I remember following the voice of an angel out of a safe, black cave into a distant world of demonic torment. It only lasted an instant. Little did I know, that was only a trailer of the next several hours of my life.

By the second time I awoke, the anesthesia had partly worn off. This time I surfaced into a world of bright, harsh agony. I couldn't, wouldn't open my eyes. I only remember excruciating pain, being rolled onto one side and then a quick pin-prick in my hip that sent me blissfully back into a numb and darkened world.

It's the third time waking I remember most. By then, anesthesia was only memory, a distant dream beyond my comprehension. My world consisted of only a handful of sensations. The first and foremost was pain. White-hot, overwhelming pain. Pain that makes you shake like icy water just before you go into hypothermia. Sweating pain like the contraction of a bile duct trying to free a gallstone lodged within. Persistent, unending pain, like the shingles virus scraping sandpaper along the exposed nerves of your temple. Pain that cuts through the soothing darkness enveloping you like a hot wire knife through Styrofoam. Pain so overwhelming, you can't isolate its source. Pain that blocks out your senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, all off-line.

Miraculously, my sense of touch survived. How do I know? Because through the waves of nauseating suffering, I felt a hand clasping mine. It was the only sensation I remember other than the darkness I wished would claim me. So much emotion was translated through that hand. I remember empathy. I remember warmth. I remember compassion. I remember it sharing strength. I remember it communicating caring. I remember clutching that hand like a lifeline. I remember it returning a gentle squeeze of reassurance each time mine went slack, a reminder it hadn't abandoned me. I never saw whose hand kept me from drowning in that tortuous sea of pain. My eyes remained firmly shut until two more stabs of codeine let me to slip quietly beneath the waves again.

Only later did I learn that hand belonged not to my mother as I think I expected, but to my girlfriend at the time. We didn't work out as a couple which was probably for the best. I would guess she doesn't think about that moment much, at least not as often as I do or even in the same way. She might not remember at all. I expect she probably wouldn't unless reminded.

I like to think that I was strong enough to have returned to this world even without her hand to keep me from being completely alone and awash. I'm sure I would have. My injury was not life-threatening. I know people who have been through worse. But there was so much comfort in her hand clinging to me, guiding me, helping me up again. It was a kindness I never had the opportunity to repay, a blessing I am unlikely to forget.

I am told that kittens are born deaf and blind, with only a limited sense of smell. For the first few days of their lives, theirs is a world exclusively of touch. As it may be for their last, depending on the cat. We sometimes pity them in their decline, thinking how poor their world must have become. I think that world may be a richer than we imagine, one that for them brings back fond memories of the reassuring warmth of their siblings, the comforting nuzzle of a friend's nose, and the loving caress of their mother's tongue.

When I started this message, I had hoped to relate it to the support I intended to give an old friend who was facing surgery. I had wanted to extend him the same lifeline my girlfriend gave me, a hand to anchor him in this world so that I might, perhaps selfishly, continue to enjoy his company. I found out later that my friend can't have that surgery, so our days together may be fewer than I'd hoped. I'll just have to see him through another way. That's what friends do.

But the point of this message remains the same. At the risk of sounding bromidic or banal, sometimes it is the actions we least remember that have the longest impacts on those around us, good or bad. Sometimes we need to remember our earliest days, and hold each other's hand through the trials this life offers with seemingly endless variation. And when you need it most, I hope you have a hand to guide you through the worst of your pain.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III