Pian Dian

Or, 'Severe Pain'.

Over lunch and boredom at the hospital on Wednesday, I heard an interesting definition: 'severe pain' is pain that wakes you out of a sleep.

Therefore, the first severe pain I had, that I can remember anyway, was in Rosebud around 1971, with a pain in the stomach so painful, so severely painful, that it woke me up out of the sort of deep, dreamless sleep you can have when you're nine or pissed off your head. I called for Mum and she got some Dexsal or something, whatever antacid we had in those days, and that sorted me out. So, either it wasn't appendicitis then, or whatever antacid she used was pretty decent stuff.

At 2:00 this morning severe pain woke me up. If I'm not hungover I normally leap out of bed and into a dressing gown with the joie de vie of a single woman on a mattress ad, but this morning as soon as I pivoted on my right hip to get out of bed, and swung my feet out onto the carpet, a wave of nausea so vicious it drowned out the pain for a second swam over me, and I limped, bent over, to the dressing gown and put it on, trying to move as little as possible. I got into the kitchen and took two Panadol, two Neurofen and paused over the Endone^®, but I thought I'd wait to see whether the first two analgesics did their job.

By 2:30 I was in more pain, certainly too much to let me get back to sleep, certainly too much to let me actually do the piss I was desperate to have, certainly too much to do much rational thinking at a normal speed. I had to keep repeating things to myself to keep my actions on track as I got a bag and put some clothes in it, because I now knew that I'd probably be staying longer at the hospital than I thought. Toothbrush, toothpaste, brush—the sort of stuff I pack to go down to Melbourne for the weekend or Geelong for a pub night, or anywhere where I know I'm going to be staying overnight.

Then, for the fourth time in fifty-six years, I called the ambulance. The pain was now so tremendous that I was not going to be able to get dressed, and there was a tremor in my voice as I explained to the dispatcher (who appeared to be from India or somewhere) where I was and what I wanted, and then he transferred me to another dispatcher—or possibly a dispatcher. I'm not sure what the Indian bloke was for—my entire life story, culminating in "I have a kidney stone. It is severely painful. I was just in hospital late yesterday getting a stent put in."

She got the point relievingly fast, and the ambulance arrived at 2:44.

One of the good thins about turning up in an ambulance after a ride over a distance I could normally cover in ten minutes, is that you get seen. Paramedics add that vital bit of credibility or something. I don't really know what thy add, but if you could bottle it, emergency triage would be a damn sight better. But as soon as they wheeled me in in a wheelchair (which I suppose was obvious from the verb) I was seen. the wheelchair was handy, too, because by now I wasn't up to walking too far without sweating, grunting and looking around for someone to lean on.

They had me lie on a bed and took a blood sample before putting in some fluid on the IV. They asked for a urine sample, and I said I would oblige as soon as I could. I lay there concentrating not on not peeing, but on coming up with a sample. After a while I was able to produce a painful, possibly severely painful but I was already awake, dribble into the plastic jug and feel that I had done a good day's work.

"Back so soon?" asked Lyndal, one of the nurses I'd seen yesterday.
"Can't get enough of you," I said weakly.

So she checked the canula, and the IV, and asked me if I wanted any morphine. I said that the Endone was doing its thing, if that's what they'd given me before, so I was alright for the moment. She whisked away on her nursely duites and i was left to ponder the infinite, or as much of it as I could while tethered to an IV pole in my pyjamas.

In due course of time, a urologist (an urologist?) came in and I asked what the problem was. She replied that it was probably inflammation of the ureter and that if I kept up with the antibiotics the infection and inflammation would disapear. I said I got that, and I apologised for coming in at such short notice but I had been in considerable pain earlier in the day. She said that I had done exactly thr righ thting. I felt like I'd just got an 'A', something I had been able to do in school without the severe pain.

After the urologist left, Lyndal came back in. By now I wanted to go the toilet pretty badly, and the only thing that kept me from doing that was not knowing where the toilets were, and not wanting to suffer the pain.

"You have to pee in this jug," she said, "so I can strain it."
"Strain it?: I repeated. "I don't envy you your job."
"There are worse things than that."
"Still… Oh, yeah. This IV—do I need this canula in?"
"We'll remove it before you leave."
"What if you don't?"
"We'd send the police around to get it back."
"For a canula?"
"Yes. It's hospital property."
"Good luck to the police removing it," I said. "I'm not touching the thing."
"Then they'd bring you back here."

Now, I know she didn't actually mean that. It was all done in light-hearted banter, but you never know…

She took out the IV, and pointed out a jug on the bedside table, and stepped out. I…passed water in the jug for what seemed like twenty minutes, and managed about half a jugful of dirty brown fluid. The relief in my bladder was considerable. I sat back on the bed, then lay down gingerly. Time passed. More time passed. After a bit more time a nurse came in and took the jug.

Around 10:30 another urologist came in and said that I was okay to leave, if I wasn't in any pain. I said that the morphine or Endone or whatever was still working and I felt much better, so if they were happy for me to go, I was happy to go, too. It was the sort of agreeable arrangement you can get in hospitals and hairdressers, but in few other places.

The hospital rang me a taxi as I put my socks and shoes on, and a nurse or orderly or porter or whatever they are came and led me out to the taxi. The taxi was quite happy to take someone in pyjamas, dressing gown and runners (if you're on Facebook you may remember that this is my usual attire for taking out the rubbish bins at 3AM Tuesday morning when I've forgotten to on Monday night) and drop them off at their house. I was lucky no-one on the street to see me. I wouldn't want to go through life in Ballarat as 'The Pyjama Guy' or something. Not without owning the domain name, anyway.

So, now I wait to see when I will have surgery to remove the stone, maybe the stent, and perhaps, just possibly, some other stuff, since all three things start with 'st'. Holistic, alliterative surgery.

Works for me.