After the natural birth of my kid some decades ago, the medical people had to rummage in me to get out the placenta, so they gave me nitrous oxide. I lay there, bewildered and relaxed, and said amiably, “That is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.” I heard them talking behind my head, and then they knocked me out with sodium pentothal. The anesthetic and the blood loss made me feel sick and blurry for days afterwards. 

When I had to have a lump removed from my breast, I requested local anesthesia, because now, I understandably mistrusted general anesthesia. The resident gave me an injection, and then they all waited a bit before the doctor started cutting. When he started, I said placidly, “I’m not actually numbed,” and they had to give me another shot.  

Some years later, I had to have an eye procedure, and the resident put numbing drops in that eye and examined it carefully. Then she started to look at the other eye. I pulled back and explained, “You didn’t put anesthetic drops in that one.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said stiffly and put in some drops. She seemed offended, and I felt as if she was blaming me for the situation. 

Yesterday, I went to the dentist. She gave me a shot in both areas where I was going to have work done. The right side blanked out nicely, and I had the usual feeling of going all puffy and wobbly there, but there was no difference on the left side. I told the doctor that when she came back, so she gave me another shot on the left side and did the right side.

Later, she leaned over me to my left, holding the drill. 

She started up.

I raised my hand.

The drill stopped. “You really aren’t numb there, are you?” remarked the dentist, and gave me a third shot. It still hurt when she started again, but not as much. 

The pain was terrible. It was a twisting, sickening feeling, overwhelming and utterly discouraging. 

Pain is invasive. It is damaging. It narrows the focus down to a blinding point. It is unacceptable. 

I am bizarrely able to avoid screaming and flailing when it happens, so I suppose it’s acceptable to my brain in some perverse way. I’m pretty stubborn generally, but when I am hurt, something in my mind observes, “Oh, that’s awful,” but then doesn’t feel the need to leap up and run away.

My doctors and dentists seem to be okay with my pain, too. I guess it has to be that way, or they would spend their lives sitting down, shaken and breathing hard, overwhelmed and weeping. I don’t want them to cry.

I had a friend, a physical therapist  who worked with old people. She hated her job, because the patients would scream and protest. “You’re killing me!” they would shout over and over again, and she would go home upset. 

I don’t want my dentist or my doctors to be upset. 

But I would like them to stop hurting me.