Tag: Pain

Visiting the ER Makes Me Philosophical

by James Wallace Harris, 8/25/25

Friday night, I went to the ER. I arrived at 7:15 pm and left at 2:45 am. At 73, I’ve been to the ER more than a few times. It’s always a fascinating experience despite the pain that brought me there and the agony of waiting to be seen.

Rejuvenation

Last fall, I started working in the yard and began to feel stronger. It made me more active. By spring, I had lost twenty pounds. When it got warm, I switched to walking for exercising, something I hadn’t been able to do since Obama was President. In other words, I felt better than I had in years.

That was quite a dramatic transformation. I had been having various health problems since my forties and had undergone surgeries three years running, starting in 2020. I had accepted I was on a downward path and couldn’t imagine having my health on an upward trajectory again.

Mentally, this rejuvenation changed me. I was having more people over and going out more. I felt like I was turning back the clock. I felt younger. I started doing things I haven’t done in years and began hoping to do even more in the future. One of the fun things I had started doing was playing Mahjong. Susan and I had begun to visit games around town. It made me want to get out again, which probably surprised Susan. Mahjong is hard. I need to think faster to play it, and that felt challenging.

I even went to my doctor to have tests done on my heart to see how much I could push things. I wanted to do more physical things.

I wasn’t completely healthy. I still had aches and pains. But I was keeping them under control with physical therapy exercises. But the miracle was walking for exercise. I started out by walking around one small block once. Over weeks, I built up stamina. Eventually, I was walking three or four laps every morning. It felt great.

I was worried about my heart and the strange twinges of pain in my right side. I asked my doctor. We talked about some possibilities. We knew I had gallstones. We were going to run tests after doing the tests on my heart. Because I’ve had heart problems before, she was more concerned about that.

The ER

Two days before the ER, I felt more rejuvenated than I had in years, so it was a shock to need to go to the ER again. I didn’t feel bad mentally. I felt healthy and clear-headed, except that I had intense shooting pains in my side and back. At 6:30 pm Friday, I decided Susan should drive me to the ER to see if they meant something serious.

We got to the ER at 7:15 pm. They checked my vitals, set up an IV, and then told me to wait in chairs. The place was crowded. I knew it would take hours, so I told Susan to go home. She’s been having her own health problems, and she had left dinner half-prepared. I didn’t want to waste that food.

Being alone made me think about what it would be like if I didn’t have Susan. I imagined living on my own, doing everything by myself. I love working alone at home, but I hate being alone in life. Getting old makes you philosophical, and so does waiting in an ER for hours.

Looking around, I saw some people were by themselves, some were with spouses, and some were with their whole families. From listening in on conversations, I learned that many in the waiting room had been there for hours. Some of those people were waiting for a hospital room to free up. Many of those had wrapped themselves in white blankets and were trying to sleep. The ER had two racks of warm blankets. I love it when they put those warm blankets on you in surgery.

Most of the people in the waiting room were waiting in silence. Some were moaning, one guy was softly crying while his wife hugged him. One poor girl was loudly groaning in pain periodically. I wondered if she was in labor. I was glad that only one person was coughing.

I tried to be still because moving sent shooting pains through me. I wanted to be as stoic as possible. But sometimes pains just shot through me, and I had to jerk about a bit. I knew a few people were looking at me like I was looking at them and wondering what was wrong. I wished I knew.

Before midnight, they called me back. They put me in a small room divided by a cloth curtain. In the other half, they were examining a teenage boy while his mother watched. I heard all the details. They weren’t nice.

They took more vitals from me, and eventually, a tech took me to get a CT scan. I love the sound CT scanners make. It was quite painful to get into position and then back on my feet again. Everywhere I went, they asked if I wanted a wheelchair. I knew I looked bad, but I didn’t want to be bad enough to need a wheelchair. I’ve often seen old people refuse help; now I know why.

They took me back to the room. A sign on the wall said it took three hours to get a CT result. But the PA told the kid who also got a CT scan it would take about an hour.

Around 1:30 am Saturday morning the CT scan results came back. It was nothing I had imagined. I had two more hernias. I’ve already had three repaired surgically. And one hernia was interfering with the tube that goes from my kidney to my bladder. That might explain the weird pains in my side. And then the PA said, “And you have a stone in one of your kidneys.” She explained it wasn’t causing the pain now.

At least it wasn’t cancer, a ruptured gallbladder, or a blocked intestine, or any of the other scary conditions I fantasized about.

The kidney stone did scare me. It wasn’t descending so it shouldn’t be causing pain but they warned me it could try to pass. It might not happen, or happen years from now, or next week.

Evidently, the pain that made moving or standing so unpleasant was my old ordinary sciatica and muscle spasms caused by spinal stenosis. That was diagnosed almost twenty years ago. Sitting at the computer or standing or walking for any length of time aggravates it.

Because I was walking more, and writing more at the computer, I thought maybe my spinal stenosis was better because I had lost twenty pounds. I can’t explain why I was given a temporary reprieve.

The PA gave me 15mg of Toradol in my IV. It was magic. Thirty minutes later I would stand up. I still hurt, but I didn’t look like I needed a wheelchair.

The Future

I have to admit this episode put me in a tailspin. I was all geared up to feel younger and healthier again. I got a taste of being more active, and I liked it. I want that feeling back.

However, aging doesn’t work that way. It’s always a slow decline. Now I knew there could be some upswings in my health, too. I feel like I’m flying a plane I know is going to crash. For a few months, I forgot that. Going to the ER reminded me that it’s still going to crash. However, the past months taught me I could sometimes regain altitude.

Experiencing feeling younger for several months makes me wonder if I could get that feeling back again. I’m back where I can’t walk for exercise. And sitting at the computer makes my back hurt worse. I’m scheduled to see a urologist this coming Friday. I figure another surgery is in my future, and then there’s a time ticking bomb in my kidney. It took me months to recover from my last hernia surgery.

But what can I do to get that healthy feeling back? It might take months, or even years. I’m not giving up. Could losing another twenty pounds help? What diet or exercise to I need to pursue?

I’ve already returned to my adapted methods of coping. I’m back to using a laptop while reclined in a La-Z-Boy. I can walk long enough to do the dishes or go grocery shopping. But I really want to walk again for exercise. I wonder if that’s possible?

I only know one person my age that hasn’t had any health problems. It’s normal to break down in your seventies. I have to keep philosophical about that. But I also want to beat the system.

I’m reminded of a Vaugh Bode underground comic strip from the 1970s. In it two lizard like creatures are tied up. They’ve been blinded, and their legs have been cut off. One of them says to the other, “When it gets dark, I’z is gonna escape” That’s me at this moment.

When I left the ER, I took a Lyft home at 2:45 am. Several friends offered to come take me home. I appreciate that. But I like the feeling of still being able to take care of myself. I know that won’t always be true.

Riding through the dark, deserted streets was surreal. It was quite pleasant. I knew I would need another surgery, but I’ve been through them before. Passing a kidney stone sounded extremely unpleasant. I know just how unpleasant. I once watched a man in the urologist’s office passing a stone. But like the Stoics say, this too will pass. I’m lucky that it wasn’t something that couldn’t be fixed. Too many people I’ve known have already died, and almost everyone I know my age is suffering from something.

Many of my friends are worse off than I am. It’s funny, but I think everyone suffers what they know and wouldn’t trade it for someone else’s kind of suffering.

I remember how being healthier made me feel positive about the future. It was just for a few months. I want that feeling back.

The most unsettling aspect of all this is not knowing the answers. Doctors are more likely to know than I do, but I’m not sure they always know. I certainly can only speculate, and that’s often dangerous.

I just wish I could find some answers to simple questions. Does pain cause more pain? Do pain pills stop the cycle of pain? They stop pain, but what else do they do over the long run? I know they cause constipation. I had a kind of hangover from the Toradol. I know my mother got hooked on pain pills. She lived with chronic pain for over a decade.

Maybe I should have talked with the people in the ER waiting room. Some of them might know things I don’t. Susan and I have been binge-watching ER. We’re in the 14th season.

Real ERs aren’t like the TV program. The sets look similar, and the machines, but I wasn’t suffering anything dramatic, so I didn’t have a flock of doctors surrounding me. I wasn’t an interesting story. Most of the action was behind closed doors, so I couldn’t see it. I saw nurses, PAs, techs, and janitors going to and fro. I’m not sure I even saw a doctor in the hallways. Doctors were busy somewhere fixing people they could fix. I couldn’t be fixed, so I was sent home. The kid behind the curtain was waiting for surgery.

I have endless questions about my aging body. My regular doctor is very patient with me. She will answer many questions. But I don’t think I’ll ever know what I want to know. It’s not like in TV shows where things are explained so precisely.

JWH

There’s No Modesty at the Urologist

James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, July 15, 2020

I awoke from the anesthesia with a tremendous urge to pee. I might have already been telling the nurse that before I was conscious because she was holding a plastic bottle up to my penis. I was trying to get up and she was urging me to lie back. I was in the middle of the action and not remembering why. Then I recalled I had been put under general anesthesia for a biopsy on my bladder. The last thing I remember was the oxygen mask.

I desperately wanted to pee, but the only thing going into the bottle was thick blood. My mind was clearing fast and I realized my hope of getting home quickly wasn’t going to happen. We had arrived at the clinic at six for a seven o’clock procedure. The clock now said eight. Susan and I had talked about how great it would be if we could have gotten home by nine.

That wasn’t going to happen. Something had gone wrong. All I could think was “I wish I wasn’t here” but I knew my wishing was wasted thinking. I wanted to pray, “God, get me out of this” but I’m atheist and I knew my prayers wouldn’t be answered even if I was a believer. I had to deal with things as they were.

I could not escape my situation and I knew how I handled it depended entirely on controlling my thoughts. Pain is so focusing. It was unreal waking up in this bizarre situation. I told myself this was just a bad trip I had to ride out and what I was experiencing was nothing compared to all the thousands of Covid patients were experiencing, much less people having cancer or heart attacks. Don’t whine, deal.

Still, I was doubling up in pain telling the nurse I had to go. She kept saying, use the urinal (which was only a plastic bottle). I told her it might help if I could sit on a toilet. I was in a recovery area with four or five bays behind curtains where patients were either being prepped for surgery or recovering. I thought for a second about modesty and then didn’t care. The nurse help wrap me up in my hospital gown and walked me to the bathroom. She put a plastic catcher over the rim of the commode before putting down the seat. She told me to pee into it because the doctor would want to see the results.

It was somewhat calming to be sitting in the bathroom by myself. I kept hoping pee would flush out all the blood, but it didn’t. All I could produce was blood as thick as Campbell’s soup just out of the can. And no matter how much blood I produced didn’t relieve the overwhelming urge to pee. I knew I needed a catheter and that’s something I’ve always dreaded. Again, it was all too obvious that what I wanted and what would happen was two different things.

I knocked on the door to get the nurse and told her it was no luck. She took me back to my bed and I begged for a catheter, but she already knew what I would want and need and had one ready. She asked if I wanted to be numbed first, I told her no, just do it, that I was dying to pee. So, she did. Six hours later, after flushing three bags of water through my system to clear out the blood I was able to go home with a catheter still in me. Unfortunately, this was Thursday and it was a three-day weekend because of the 4th of July. I’d had to live with the catheter until Monday.

Those four days were very educational. Pain is the perfect Zen Master. When a student’s mind wanders the Zen Master will whack their shoulders with a bamboo cane. The tube up my urethra would zap me with pain if I didn’t pay perfect attention. Luckily, the bladder spasms would only last five to ten seconds. I’d have to clutch something and kick the floor until they stopped.

My purpose here is not to bellyache about my pain, I know too many people who suffer far greater. No, I bring up this yucky incident to show how it affected my thought processes. The first title I had for this essay was “Thinking Clearly.” But I decided it was too boring to catch people’s attention. Then I thought of using “Pain is the Zen Master” but doubted it would attract much attention either. Then “There’s No Modesty at the Urologist” came to me and knew it was the kind of title that some people would click on. One of my most popular posts was “Losing My Modesty” about when three women holding me down to cut off a skin growth near my genitals.

I realized while in recovery that I needed to think clearly. Panic, fear, self-pity, anger, bargaining would not get me out of the situation. But neither would magical thinking of wishing or praying. And I realize that many of my thoughts were delusional or led to false assumptions. Making imaginary bargains, extrapolating from poor data, or speculating about the possibilities just generated endless possibilities that would never happen.

Let me give you one concrete example. Because I had a pain spasm every time my catheter was pulled or pushed I imagined that it was stuck to wounds within my urethra where healing and scabbing was taking place. I worried that pulling it out would be immensely painful, reopening the healing sites. I feared I’d need another catheter put right back in. I worried and thought about this for three days. Then Monday, the doctor pulled it right out with no pain, no fuss, and no bleeding. In other words, I worried for nothing.

In three days I theorized about endless possibilities — both positive and negative. Most of those thoughts was wasted thinking. As I wrote about earlier in “Expecting the Unexpected” I can’t predict the future. We can observe data to a small degree and act on it in small ways, but not in significant ways. For example, as my urine bag filled up I’d feel the need to pee. It would wake me up in the night just like when my bladder fills up. But I knew when I opened the tap on the urine bag the draining out of the urine would make a suction that caused a pain spasm. I deduced if I disconnected the bag’s hose to the catheter first that suction action wouldn’t affect me. That’s how far I could predict the future. Not much, huh?

Another example, I went back to the urologist on the 13th to hear the results of the biopsy. Of course, even though I’m not superstitious, I worried that might be a bad day to hear the report.

When the doctor told me I needed a biopsy weeks ago I realized that any speculation would be meaningless until I got the results. The answer would be like Schrodinger’s Cat — unknowable until I opened it. On the 13th the doctor told me the biopsy was clear. That was a huge relief. I can’t say I didn’t worry, but not much, most I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what I would do if the lab report had been positive.

We all think too much. We have so little control. We want to believe we have magical powers to control reality with our wishes, but we don’t. I know this, but I still wasted a lot of time on endless useless thinking. Another example, while waiting for my results I craved sweets, but I was afraid to eat them because I thought it would cause the biopsy to come back positive. When I saw the floor was dirty I thought if I don’t sweep it immediately my biopsy will come back positive. I know such thinking is crazy, yet knowing that doesn’t stop such thoughts.

We live in a highly deterministic reality even though we want to believe that mind over matter works. Religious people use the word faith but it’s use is not exclusive to theology. Throughout this whole process I kept trying to outthink my doctor even though I know nothing of urology. The reality is I have to put faith in modern medicine. I can’t think my way around it. I don’t have any alternatives. I’d love if prayer work and a personal God was taking care of me like my nurse, but there’s just no evidence for that. I’d love if I had great mental powers so my will could alter reality to my whims, but there is no evidence for that either.

Even the simple desire for modesty was beyond my control. My nurse saved me that day. She attended to all my needs while also helping others. She rushed from bay to bay but was always there when I needed help, which was often. She didn’t always close the curtain and I thought about saying something, but I realized it was too petty, too nothing. It was only my thoughts that made me worry about modesty. So I let it go. If people walking by wanted to look at me I didn’t care. Actually, I felt sorry for them having to see a old guy with a bloody tube coming out of his dick. That must have been revolting.

When it was all over I understood it was just a big painful inconvenience, the pain had been bearable. I could survive because I did. At the time I told myself I never wanted this to happen again. I still need my prostate trimmed, so I need to go through this all over again. And I will.

I don’t know if I can apply the lessons I’ve learned to the next time. I might still worry needlessly, still try to bargain, pray, read omens, and act on superstitions. The reality is we might never be able to control our thoughts even when we know they are wasted thoughts. Can we ever just accept reality?

This Covid crisis is a parallel example. Too many people want to reject reality and act on magical thinking. I keep hoping our whole society will become rational and think clearly, but isn’t that wishful thinking too? Especially, if I can’t think clearly myself.

JWH