On Physical Pain
what it can teach us, if we let it
This essay contains discussion of child abuse and medical horror stories.
Also: I genuinely appreciate the kindness that will make some of you want to express sympathy over my personal history, but it’s neither necessary nor helpful. I know that it shouldn’t have happened and that you’re sorry it did. Thank you in advance for resisting the urge to say so.
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'My tooth is aching' than to say 'My heart is broken'. Yet if the cause is accepted and faced, the conflict will strengthen and purify the character and in time the pain will usually pass. Sometimes, however, it persists and the effect is devastating; if the cause is not faced or not recognised, it produces the dreary state of the chronic neurotic. But some by heroism overcome even chronic mental pain. They often produce brilliant work and strengthen, harden, and sharpen their characters till they become like tempered steel.”
—C.S. Lewis
A few days ago, I made my funniest friend laugh out loud—always an achievement.
I was relating how badly it hurt to pass a kidney stone at home, alone and without the morphine pump that would’ve been part of the experience in the hospital.
Why wasn’t I in the hospital? It was my first kidney stone, so all I had to go on was the experience of a friend who was talking me through it. He told me that his always take at least a week from symptom onset to passing. The pain started on Friday morning. I was scheduled for a CT scan on Monday afternoon. The stone passed in the wee hours of Sunday.
In relating what happened to my comedian friend, I said, “If Joe Biden had appeared in my apartment with a morphine pump and all he wanted was (a degrading sexual favor), I swear, I couldn’t have gotten the old man’s pants off fast enough.”
The mental image is funny, but I wasn’t exaggerating. The pain made me black out. I screamed myself hoarse. If my phone hadn’t been on the other side of my apartment, I’d have called an ambulance and begged them to break the door down and rescue me.