Pain in the Night

Pain in the Night ©

By Michael Casey

Well I just had to get up such is my pain, other pains are available, but I can only speak of mine. I’m writing this from the very edge, if I cannot get to sleep because of the pain then I may as well tell it into another story. I had my quadruple heart bypass 15 months ago now, and I’m still screaming in pain.

I was fit and healthy until the surgery, or so I thought, but without it I’d now be dead, more than likely. So what gets me screaming, the Beatles or am I a Stones man? You get a dull pain in the centre of your chest, and it gets bigger, it’s like a craw hammer pulling you apart, as I was telling the nice lady the other day. Then just for fun you’ll have a stabbing feeling right to the heart, like stabbing yourself with your pencil. This is due to the fact that you’ve been split open like a Kentucky Fried Chicken so that the surgeon can work on you.

I hope I’m not putting potential heart patients off the alternative could be death or major heart attack. I was talking to my priest, he did try and hide in Aldi to avoid me, but anyway he said that at our age it could be 3 years before recovery. I’ve just jumped out of my seat as I had a twinge. The whole of my left chest is a danger zone, one touch or even a lick from our cat would be enough to make me scream. My heart team guy said just consider what has gone on in there.

I now have a party trick, if I put an ice cube on my right nipple it is really really cold, but on my left nipple I can hardly feel a thing. I don’t have any nipple tassels so get that idea out of your head. What else can I do, I can convulse in pain and scream at the same time. Muscular Skeletal pain it’s called, I get it in my left side, though my pet name for it is BASTARD, I was recovering really fast from my bypass surgery when that came along.     

Arthritis joins in for fun, it’s a race around the track for all my pains, up down and around, which does sound like a song title. Which part of the body gets it first and where will it share to. I can be limp and then not limp at all. I can have it in my shoulders and then my hips, but never on my lips so far.

I have paracetalmol  for my heart and a slap on pain killer for other bits, the paracetalmol gives you man boobs after a bit, so you end up stealing your daughter’s bra. Movelat is for other areas and is fast acting, which is just you want as a freezing pain slides down from your shoulder to your heart. Then you have another pain, but that’s just constipation, which you get as a result of all the pain killers.

Now I am recently getting a pain in my knee and my leg scars have joined in just for fun, while you folks think I’m just a pain in the arse.

 So try and keep on smiling when you can hardly think and breath due to the pain. I’d also like to know what did they leave in my chest, as sometimes when I move I can feel as if I’m being stabbed from the inside. Or maybe it’s a pacemaker, or it’s somebody’s remote control, I’m told in the future I’ll have fun at airports because of the metal stitches inside me.

I didn’t intend sharing all this with you, but its either that or stay tossing and turning in bed, and screaming at the moon, the local wolves have started to complain I’m putting them out of a job.