For about three or four weeks now, I’ve been having a pain crisis. It’s not thunder, lightening, monsoon kind of pain crises that completely debilitates you; it’s more like a light mist. You know, the kind that messes up the wash job on your car; the annoying kind of pain crisis that hurts just enough to leave you feeling achy, icky, and tired.
When you have pain crises that run on for weeks, there are small things that are challenging; like taking a shower. I don’t know if other Sickle Cell patients experience this or not, but showering is often a painful chore.
For me, water has always been like a massive leech that sucks the life right out of me. Baths, spas, swimming pools, lakes...they all cause pain crises if I’m in them too long or if they are too cold. I’ve lived in California most of my life and have never swam in the ocean. I’ve been to the ocean, I’ve been on the ocean, and I’ve even put my footsies in the ocean, but that’s as far as I go; it’s much too cold.
As for showers, they often leave me exhausted and trigger a crisis. If I’m having a crisis that rivals a monsoon, I don’t bother with showers. In addition to the way water zaps my strength, the impact of the water on my skin is FAR too painful. If an intense pain crisis that lasts days—as smelly as it sounds--I have to skip showering. It’s terrible when you’re illness makes being clean a painful chore.
When I have a crisis, the pain is usually in my chest and back. The monsoon type of crises are whole body and it hurts to be touched. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to the hospital and had the following conversation with the evaluation nurse:
They will ask, “Are you having chest pain?” Telling a nurse in an ER that you are having chest pains is a sure way to immediately get seen. They have to assume that it’s your heart and that you are dying of a heart attack.
“I’m not having chest pains in the way that you mean, but I am having Sickle Cell pain which is in my chest.”
“So you’re having chest pain?”
“I’m having Sickle Cell pain, that happens to be in my chest.”
“So you are having chest pain.”
“No, I’ve having Sickle Cell pain in my chest, as well as my back and everywhere else.” And round the conversation goes. It’s like the Abbott and Costello routine, “Whose’ on first?”
I remember one day I went to a Church activity for single adults. I was having a pretty bad pain crisis and it was very taxing to go, but there was a certain young woman there I wanted to see. While at the social, I was sitting beside a guy I knew. He asked how I was feeling and I told him I was having a pain crisis. He went to place his hand on my knee in a reassuring manner, and I asked him to “please don’t touch me because it hurts to be touched right now."
Two seconds later he thoughtlessly, and void of any care, slammed his hand down on my knee and said, “Well, I hope you feel better.”
Pain coursed through my body and I yelled, “don’t touch me!” Idiot nearly fell out of my mouth, but I restrained. He wasn’t light on the Christmas tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment