Written On August 12th
“Enemy, Familiar Friend, My Beginning And My End, Broken Truth, Whispering Lies, And It Hurts Again..”
-Red
Pain. We all experience it at some point in our life. We see it every day in other people’s lives and it scares us. No matter what kind of pain it is we will eventually experience it. We avoid it, run away from it and try to hide from it but in this broken world it always ends up finding us at one point or another. Even though we all know that we will run into pain at some point we are almost always shocked when we end up experiencing it.
Right now I am sitting in the surgical observation unit at RUH (Royal University Hospital) in Saskatoon. I see, hear and feel pain all around me. After the emergency surgery I began to wonder if the sharp pain that came from the open incision would ever go away. The only thing that kept me going at that pain was the knowing that I would be getting some more morphine soon and that in a few days I would be back in the OR (Operating Room) in a few days where they would open me back up and then properly close the incision. I also longed for the anesthetic that I knew would keep me asleep for a few hours and away from the constant pain that would never leave me alone and kept me awake all night. Knowing that I would be pain free and away from this broken world, this broken body and the anxiety that comes along with it comforted me a little bit.
As the nurses push the pain and anxiety medication into the port in my central line which I had found implanted in my chest while I was under for my first emergency surgery I feel a little bit of relief but it doesn’t last long. I fall asleep for about a half hour but then the pain comes creeping back. When it hits me it is like I have been stabbed in the stomach and I jerk awake. My whole body shakes and the muscles in my stomach that had been sliced through tense up along with every other muscle in my body. This only makes the pain and anxiety worse. It seems as though there is no escape and at the moment there isn’t. I will myself to pass out from the pain so that I can hide inside of myself but I have no such luck.
As I lay in bed waiting for my next surgery I try to get myself to another place, a place that I love, a place where I am playing music and feeling the rush of enjoyment with every beat in the drums, every key on the piano and every pluck of the strings on my bass guitar as I play. It doesn’t work. My thoughts turn to Christina, her beautiful long brown hair and her wonderful smile. I find myself missing her and being willing to do anything to have her here beside me at this moment but that will never happen. She is gone. It is August 12, 2011 and tomorrow will it will be exactly one year since she passed away. The emotional pain only makes the physical pain worse. I want to cry, I want to scream and ask God how he could have taken her from me like that. Alone and afraid very shortly after the car accident but I can’t do that because it hurts too much. When the medication is finally strong enough to put me to sleep I am thankful at first but then the nightmares come. They torment me as the images run through my mind. For some reason I am in the car with Christina when she has her accident. I’m not hurt but I can see her laying there broken. I try to help her as I hear the wail of sirens in the distance. I do everything I can but she has lost too much blood. I hold her in my arms and feel her leave me. I wake up crying as this all too familiar pain washes over me.
I can’t get away from it.
How do I deal with this?
I really have no idea.
