Pain is a cage.
It doesn’t start out as one. Certainly I believed I was strong enough to handle “pain” or at least what I thought I knew pain to be. My experience had frankly, luckily, been limited to direct injuries, and until just a few years ago, surgery:
A brand new, out of the box, first time used, nine inch bread knife running into the side of my hand. Tip of a thumb in a mandolin slicer. Plenty of burns in the commercial kitchens. A wasp (or hornet, or yellow jacket, I’m not sure. It didn’t leave a business card, just a sting and a whole lot of swelling). A fish hook running up the side of my finger.
Oh yeah, the surgery. Thyroidectomy, five inch scar across the neck and a small hole below it, where a tube was inserted to help fluids to drain and keep down swelling while in recovery. That was a crazy sensation when the surgeon pulled out the tube without the benefit of any numbing.
A couple weeks ago, I was handed a new type of pain to experience. It had started with a headache feeling like sinus pressure, like a cold or allergies coming on. I didn’t think much of it at first, but I was getting concerned when it hadn’t left me by day three.
Then, on a Sunday evening, standing in the kitchen working some impromptu dinner magic on leftovers, my brain went for a spin. That’s the way it felt; the brain suddenly spins inside my cranium like a ball then stops, leaving me off-balance for a couple seconds. It’s happened before, but not for a couple years. I had not noticed it then, but thinking back, I realized that was the moment the headache went away.
An hour or so later, I felt a little droopy. The left eyelid felt odd, like I couldn’t close it completely. I checked myself in the mirror, and I could close my right eye fine, but the left stayed open unless I shut my eyes hard. The left side of my mouth was also weak. Not numb, but it felt like that, the lingering effects of novocaine after the dentists so gleefully drilled for who-knows-what inside my mouth.
Yes, I went to the ER. Five hours later, after exams, blood tests, head CT, head MRI, chest x-rays, chest CT, and continued observation, the ER doctor concluded some good news. No evidence of stroke. But he couldn’t point to any evidence to say what had caused the headache or the dizziness, and that left only a few explanations for what had become partial facial paralysis. A transient cerebral ischemia, a brief episode of neurologic dysfunction caused by ischemia (loss of blood flow) without infarction (tissue death). Or a complex migraine, a somewhat generic term, but can be defined to encompass migraines that have symptoms which mimic strokes.
Also noted from all these tests: hyperglycemia, pre-hypertension, anemia, gallstones. The doc did say the high blood sugar could just be from the extra adrenaline of being in the ER, but to still keep an eye on it. The pre-hypertension too, but I have been under treatment for that with my primary care doc for a couple years now. The discovery of anemia was a new twist, so it will be interesting to see that play out. And gallstones? So that explains the couple times I thought I was suffering some granite-like constipation. I figured it was stress. There were a few highly stressful events bookending the couple episodes I had with what I now suspect to have been the stones.
But about the cage. The first day after the ER wasn’t the greatest, by a mile or so. My left eye would dry eye from my inability to blink. I couldn’t smile. Just a contorted smirk on the right side of my face and a creepy wink when the right eye shut. I tried an eye patch the next day, but it was more cumbersome than helpful. In fact very cumbersome and hardly helpful at all. But by the third day I was able to get the left lid to shut on command, with extra effort and the occasional assistance of eye drops.
There wasn’t numbness with this paralysis. I could feel anything and everything which touched my cheek, jawline and lips. But the muscles wouldn’t cooperate, from the centerline of my face all the way around to behind my left ear. The muscles along this perimeter would work. I could feel the tugging and the pulling. It was uncomfortable at first, but slowly the bars of this cage started to grow. The muscle tension became a constant reminder that I couldn’t shift the left eyebrow. Couldn’t smile. Couldn’t drink or eat without persistently dabbing my mouth with a napkin to hide the potential, sometimes inevitable, spillage.
The bars on the cage grew not just in heighth but also in thickness. Sleeping on my left side meant waking up with facial soreness akin to being struck in the face. It would fade but never disappear. The pain would wake me at night. After work, all I wanted to do was take a nap to catch up on lost sleep. Even if I made it straight through a night, the pain tired me out during the day, and naps had become a regular event.
The pain cage was closing me in. Tiredness was the first sign. Next, my patience. I didn’t care to be around people. Relating the story over and over, I had physical and emotional trouble speaking because about the paralysis. Hearing stories, though well-meaning, how others went through the same thing. “Try this. Do that. It will help; it helped me.” It was like the cancer stories again, but worse. I think what made it all worse was my simple inability to show any expression on my face. And that I couldn’t point to a cause, like I could with the cancer. Whatever “this was, this happened. Now I must wait until it gets better. Which it should, but without a cause or injury to treat, nobody knows for sure.
Twelve days out, and some slight improvement. I can make the left cheek lift and twitch a little. That causes more pain, but I see it as an improvement. At least it’s not spreading. I hate the cage. The pain is persistent. The sun is shining today. A great day to get out, maybe a little yardwork. Maybe a drive this weekend. No, that involves people. I need a new weed trimmer. Nope, that involves people. Need to hit farmer’s market for fresh veggies. Planning my spicy veggie soup this weekend and I always make a big pot. Yeah no, more people.
Even with good pain killers, the cage door still feels locked. I don’t mind taking something for pain relief, as long as the pain goes away so that I don’t have to continuously take more pain meds. This isn’t like the first week after my surgery, when I had some 800 mg Tylenol with codeine. Good stuff, but after the first day home, I took it only at night to help me sleep. Otherwise, most of the incision area pain went away quickly. But, like I mentioned earlier, I thought I knew pain.
I knew just one kind of pain. I’m now learning firsthand about a different kind.
Comments
Post a Comment