feldman

Around one in the afternoon on Thursday I stretched a little back and forth, pulled my shoulder blades back and down, and tried to ease what I thought was a muscle strain in my mid back.

At nine that night I sat cross-legged on a gurney in the corridor outside of radiology, patiently waiting my turn with the frail and the unlucky, and I thought to myself, "Well this isn't where I expected the evening to go." Then I got another bout of renal colic and grabbed the side rails behind me, only able to produce a gasp and squeak as I felt shivved up under the left ribs.

I got to an 8 on the pain scale. Keep in mind that my 9 is an orgasm-triggered thunderclap migraine, and my 10 is manual stretching of the cervix during a contraction during unmedicated labor. My 7 is breaking a bone in my foot. I can attest that if you stabbed someone in the kidney, I can totally buy that they might seize up and then bleed out before they could muster a peep.

Eventually I had my turn riding the suggestive sled in and out (and in and out) of the suggestive doughnut that is a computed tomography machine. I always ask for a copy of any imaging. If I could, I'd prepay my own autopsy if I could somehow watch. Lest I get too involved in the quirks and deviations of my own anatomy, the ER doc assured me that my viscera "are perfect". I blush, and cringe backward through another smooth muscle spasm in an organ I normally don't consciously feel. But I'm in my early forties and have no stones in any of the secret pockets and pouches of my torso, so that's kind of a win in itself.

I do have a kidney infection, caught early enough to avoid hospitalization, which is really the best possible outcome for the symptoms. Once the medications kicked in the slicing cramp backed off into a dull warm ache. Four days later it feels like a sinus infection, tucked under the back of my left ribs, but today I finally got through a day without napping twice for hours at a time.

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minxy

I think sometimes a high pain tolerance is confused with a lack of body awareness, but you've just done a very good job keeping yourself out of a long hospital stay. Well done you! I hope you heal up quickly, and I'm so sorry to hear you were unwell.

feldman

This is why I illustrate my pain scale, because I'm sure there are more painful experiences I haven't had, but this is where I'm coming from with my eight. And thanks to my spouse I'm learning to seek medical attention earlier, even though it sometimes makes me feel like a hypochondriacal jackass.