The worst pain I have ever felt

One year ago I really thought, maybe for the first time ever- that I was going to die. I’ve had two babies and done countless other ridiculous things, but I have never really entertained death as a possibility in the way that I did this time. 

Pain is interesting, you forget it has an end- it is hard to imagine how it started or where you have really been while you’ve been feeling it, because pain is a white room. You live inside it like a small shell- it’s a companion. 

I am used to having companions. My whole life I have had a familiar of one kind of another, small children have followed me around pretty much since I was a child myself, and I have had strangely intense relationships with toys, pets and even on occasion inanimate objects. I have realised that my perhaps limited need for adult company comes from my commitment to these other friendships, and I have worked hard to open myself up to my peers.

It’s ironic then that at a time in my life where I was beginning to feel more level, more able to accept myself as having a right to be here, that I gained a new companion (aging may be like this I fear), and this time it was neither big nor small but instead, insidious. 

Unfortunately, as a woman, this companion is hard to make visible- almost as if it really were an imaginary friend. Let me tell you this- you can sit in A&E for hours and hours writhing in pain but unless you have a man with you, no one will hear you. And I pride myself on being somewhat articulate, quietly outspoken even. But no one could hear me, and pain seems to like this too. 

Because it will keep on, and build and grow until it’s a silent flower that sits on your shoulder (or in my case in your gut) and opens its mouth to try and say something profound. But nothing comes out, it’s only pain, and always pain- utterly bland in its neutrality.

When I was finally admitted (hours and hours later, was it that day even? I am not sure), I lay in the bed  and wriggled and tangled myself up. They were going to remove a gallstone from my bile duct. This little stone had been hurting me for years on and off, but it had finally got stuck and I had gone yellow and lost a stone.

I gave up hard drinking years ago but when they say live fast, die young, know this- it is not the way you want to die. Between being in hospital this day and the second time I was admitted, I was given an antibiotic that caused a drug induced liver injury, so instead of the jaundice resolving itself, it mysteriously doubled down. And that is the most miserable I have been in my life- constant itching, all night and day. My lasting memory of that is scratching my feet with a hairbrush until they bled. It is not the sexiest thing that has ever happened to me. 

Of course, being a girl, no one wanted to accept that once the stone had gone I might still have a problem. At one point I sat in the hospital every single day, asking for blood tests. I was exhausted, couldn’t work, slept all day and was losing more weight. I got to know the staff pretty well, one of them asking me why I was there again? Why was I there? I am not going to go into the failures of the system here but it involved quite a few mistakes that meant I may have died if I had not been so insistent. My liver was in a terrible way, with ALT levels at 1008. The normal range is between 7 and 55. 

After a scary phone call once they had realised the really big mistake, I was told to come back immediately. That night I slept on an examining table as there were no beds and given the drip that overdose patients are given. The conditions were so terrible, no toilet (I won’t go into why), no nurses. This was a different kind of pain, this time it even made me laugh. I felt like a fish finger on a baking tray and this gave me hysterics. I had my smiley face socks on in resistance. 

At this point it was unknown why this had happened. I was told I must have abused paracetamol, or maybe I had something terminal. Hearing the word biopsy is very unpleasant. I did some very unrecommended googling, I thought so this is how it ends- not with a bang but a whimper. A silly little stone.

It is strange what happens when you look at death properly. I have always been aware of my mortality, I did half an english literature degree for god’s sake! I have taken hallucinogens, read poetry my whole life, romance has been an integral part of my life. But this was a different thing. It was real- death is another companion actually, but not so cute. 

The main problem would be leaving people behind. I have lived a very full life, full of joy and intrigue, but my children, my children. The most important thing I have done, I like them an awful lot. They need me and out of all the pain I had felt, this was the worst. Feeling this pain while I was all alone on a baking tray. I don’t know. But I do know that I never want to feel like that again. 

A year on, my life is the same as before, no big revelations. My happiness level is back to where it was, perhaps with an added dimension. The nihilism which largely shrunk after having kids still quietly operating in the background. But I don’t want to forget how precious every moment is, nor how worrying about things changes nothing.

Life is other people, and death, it turns out, is the same. We are not alone.