Pain, Pain, Go Away

After operation the first thing that hits you right in the middle of abdomen is acute pain. There is no escaping it. You try to run, hide, walk slowly, it simply stays with you. It wants entire body for itself. I consider this very selfish nature of pain. Of course you resist, but that is generally very feeble exercise. It gets into your back, it gets into your legs, hands, you name the body part the pain is there. Every activity then becomes a painful activity, like turning on your side. The injections and drugs try to make you sleep so that you forget about the pain, but you wake up and there it is, waiting like your pet cat ready to pounce on you. I have tried ignoring it, I think that has made it more angry and increase its dosage when I am least expecting. My doctor advises that is better way of handling pain rather than paying attention to it. He also advised talking loudly about how the pain does not affect you and perhaps sing about it. The pain listens and eventually disheartened, leaves your body. It seems to be working.

Like most operations they cut open larger part of my abdomen and then subsequently 'stitched' it. This stitching is merely act of stapling together two pieces of skin. So my scars look like second copy of expense report, highly stapled! No wonder it hurts. This confirms my belief that my surgery was closed in hurry. It was late and they thought, 'Ok, what else is remaining? Ah the skin is not together is it? Let us staple it!' Now I am running around finding a right doctor who would remove the staples and put something meaningful there, like good dressing with some anti-septic. I don't think my pain would go away till somebody does that.

Returning home I was worried about the post-operative care. For example, in hospital if it pains they give you injection to make you sleep. You complain more, out come the tablets that go in various parts of your body. At home you do not have this proper care. At home more pain generally causes a long discussion to one's lack of exercise, and how in the first place that started the whole thing. My family is of strong opinion that my cancer is entirely caused by my eating non-vegetarian foods. Consequently they do not see any reason why I should complain. For them it is simple situation of a person who desires cancer. ('You eat cow meat, well you were digging yourself in it!'). It is different kind of pain but you see there it is.

Another painful exercise after operation is working through the beauracracy of insurance companies and hospitals. So I call various people, and they inform me that things are in progress or that they would take some time. Insurance companies and agents however are more humane lately. So everytime I call, they make it a point to tell me that I should pass on their best wishes to the patient and the fact that they strive very hard to make patient comfortable. I assure them that the patient is comfortable and acknowledges their best wishes. It is not considered polite for patients to call hospitals or insurance agents. They generally expect the relatives to do the grunt work. I think it is fair too, they probably expect relatives to carry some pain rather than patient getting lion's share of it and being selfish about it.

I remember the old song about pain (or was it love?); The song goes like this:
'Wherever you go, whatever you do,
I will be only minutes behind you'

I think it must be about pain, there is no other feeling which follows you so closely...