An anecdote

I want to tell this story in a linear fashion but a) I do not think in a linear way and b) my mind is so full of ideas as a result of the month of September that I'm living them full out daily and I want to share those with you . . but I don't want to get ahead of myself and talk about the end before I tell you what came first. And, I am tired. Tired because I am on a big dose of prednisone, a steroid, that keeps waking me up at 5 am (not so bad) or 3 am (not so great) or midnight (bad news). I wake up and I am wide awake. No chance of falling back asleep. Once I stop fighting it, it's kinda nice. Quiet house all to myself. Time to journal or read or shower. Or eat, since the pred gives me the appetite of ten men. I almost said a horse. Which is bigger, do you think? Probably depends on the men. Or the horse.

I'm tired and I am doing my best to listen to my body and take gentle care of myself so I won't write long. I won't write the next few days of the September tale, the days that came after our Stinson trip. Instead, an anecdote.

Have you ever been to the ER? Or admitted to the hospital as a patient? Or taken someone else? If so, you might remember a question they ask almost every time:

What's your pain on a scale of 1-10?

Here is what happens in my head when I get asked that question:

What IS my pain level? I mean, I have definitely been in more pain than this. It's certainly not the worst pain I've ever felt. I could say it's a 4, that leaves me lots of room for if it gets worse. But is it really even as bad as a 4? And I mean, it's nowhere near as painful as my first tattoo.

And on and on, complete with comparisons against imaginary people and how they might feel in my situation.

Have I mentioned I experience some anxiety in my day to day life? Yes, well.

For the record, the health care team is using that question as a tool to assess how I'm doing and to start building an awareness of me as a self-reporter. They're comparing what I say to how I'm acting, to how I look, to what my vital signs say. It's a diagnostic tool among many. They're (probably) not standing there thinking "This joker thinks THIS is a four?! Verbal eye roll." Maybe they are; I'm not a nurse.

When I went into labor with my first two it came on fast and strong. At one point I was on a bed with the fetal monitors strapped around my huge belly, tight as hell and making me crazy with claustrophobia. My contractions came every minute or two and with each contraction I threw up. Tears were streaming down my face and I was still answering every question the doctor or nurse asked, in detail. I kept thinking, "If I could just get a second to catch my breath I'll feel much better."

Not long after that I was wheeled into the OR for an emergency C-section. Where I wanted to marry the anesthesiologist who gave me a spinal block and took all the pain away.

Later on in my hospital room, alone with no babies since they were in the NICU and my husband was with them, I looked up at the wall. There was a childish graphic--ten stick figure faces in a row. I don't know if Face #1 had a smile but I know Face #10 had tears streaming down its very sad looking face. It didn't register much, just something to look at.

I truly have no idea at what point it occurred to me, some time long after all of us had gotten out of the hospital, that Face #10 was the closest match to my face during that experience. That sign said on a scale of 1-10 my pain was a ten.

I'm sure something could hurt worse than that, I thought. As if I have to save that ten and only use it once for what is truly the worst pain I could experience.

So that's another thing about me. You're learning it not much after I learned it myself.