Ouch

Pain. Such a simple word and yet such a complex beast. Throughout my care I had been pain scored on a scale of 1-10, where I had to judge at which level my pain currently stood. As a general rule I had scored myself at about 3 for most of my stay, last night I would have put that score at about 15. I had woken at about 2:30 it absolute paralysing agony, the sort of agony that made both reaching for my buzzer to call a nurse, or even just shouting out, a physical and mental impossibility. As I lay there I would have quite happily have had someone push me out of my 4th floor window if they had told me it was the best thing to relieve the pain, no hesitation. I can’t sit here and describe exactly how I felt but the pain robbed me of all rational thought and took me to a place I hope I never have the misfortune to visit again.

After an hour and a half of moving my body a millimetre at a time I was able to get the attention of a nurse who kindly went out of her way to secure me a huge dose or oral morphine. This did manage to take the edge off the pain, reducing it to a measly 9, and I spent the rest of the night out of bed propped up in my chair. The medical staff were a little surprised that I had suffered so badly and endeavoured to ease my pain by adding….Ibuprofen. Wasn’t convinced myself, I have to say. Still maybe tonight with an extra days healing under my belt things wouldn’t be so bad.