by Spike Gillespie
"We
are all familiar with the professional euphemisms of `you'll feel a little
push,' and `some pressure,' after which pain electrifies the
skull..."
Paul West,
A Stroke of Genius: Illness and
Self-Discovery
I hold that there are three types of pain: purely mental; purely physical; and can't-tell-your-head-from-your-heart-from-your-ass combo-pain. I have suffered all three as have, I imagine, most of us. The very worst pain I think I ever suffered was nine years ago when the agonizing contractions of a late-night miscarriage gave way to three full years of mental anguish which my body commemorated annually by cramping up on that very anniversary date until, finally, I gained the release that time does sometimes seem to bring. These days, when I am hurting, I reflect upon those days. It's a warped therapy I learned from my mother who likes to tell her brood, when we are down, "to think about the worse-off." Like going out to the corner and observing a homeless, legless Vietnam Vet drunk and begging for Mad Dog change will somehow make me feel much, much better. Certainly it won't make me want to chain myself to this poor victim and then proceed to throw the both of us off the First Street bridge, will it, Ma? Oh no, dear, you'll feel much better.
Outside of this technique, however, are there other ways to remedy pain? Well, that depends. In matters of the heart or mind -- when we are crushed by that human who two weeks ago was a mere stranger but by yesterday is suddenly "the one without whom I cannot go on living," or perhaps suffering what Holly Golightly termed "the mean reds" -- it seems empathy is right around the corner. As long as you know which corner to turn around, you can get someone to listen. In the middle of a nasty she-gets-the-house-you-get-the-Visa-bill divorce? Hey, so is that guy at the end of the bar. Guaranteed catharsis at the bargain price of whatever it costs to buy him another double Chivas.
Even if you are shy (perhaps yet another source of psychic pain) and have trouble finding eager ears to hear you out, outlets for your psychological suffering abound. Every Christmas, for example, I fall into the funkiest of deep dark waters. Every year I try a new remedy. Most recently, I dragged my four-year-old away from his shiny, happy, sweatshop toys ("See, it could be worse. You could be earning five dollars a day to make Power Rangers in a poorly ventilated factory overseas.") at eleven in the morning on Jesus' birthday. I forced him, whining all the way, to attend the opening of Little Women. There, safe in the dark, I wept openly along with the rest of the crowd when the pouty Clare-Danes-as-wee-Beth ceremoniously kicked it.
When it comes to physical pain, though, it's been my experience that empathy of any variety is difficult to encounter. Even if you can get someone on the phone to listen, the odds of a personal visit longer than 10 minutes are slimmer than Karen Carpenter. My theory is that unless you are in corporal pain, you cannot feel it. If you can't feel it, you can't believe it is as great as she-in-pain claims it to be. "Get over it," is the message given when the agonized seeks comfort, even if that message is couched subtextually in the spoken, "You poor thing. That must hurt. Well, gotta go get my ferret dipped."
I understand this constant, overall lack of empathy for a couple of reasons. The first is the part of my job description (occupation: mother) that insists I must dole out kisses and consolation and ice sponges and hugs every time he bumps into a table, cuts his finger, trips on the stairs, or sticks a hanger in an outlet. I go through the motions. I hold him and love him. But I can't feel it. What I can feel is that somehow I must be a bad parent. Why? Because secretly I am wondering how many minutes until we pass beyond this episode and get on with our lives. Part of me knows I should try harder. I never can.
The second reason I understand uncaring sentiments is based on my own recent encounters with pain. In '94 I had four major (to my mind) episodes. These do not include the discomfort brought on by cold and flu -- trouble spots that can be healed with juice and rest and a babysitter and a People magazine. These were events where I could, despite the agony and throbbing and bruised tenderness, sort of still move around. This, I feel certain, led my friends to believe it couldn't be so bad ("It could be worse. You could be in the hospital.").
In February, I had a wisdom tooth pulled. Numbed to the gills, I knew nonetheless if it took a strong man many, many hard tugs with a pair of pliers to complete the operation, surely it was bound to hurt later. It did. A lot. Blessed with a prescription for Vicodin, I pulled through stoned and groggy, baking Valentine cookies for everyone who lived nearby, calling the rest (some hadn't heard from me in years) to express my drug-induced dreamy love for them.
In March, what would turn out to be a benign freckle (a carefully cultivated beauty mark if you will) was deemed highly probably skin cancer by my dermatologist. Again, numbed, I lay on the table and watched (couldn't help it) as he sliced off the only thing Cindy Crawford and I ever had in common, as well as a nice chunk of my lower lip, and scraped it into a little jar. All this whilst pleasantly discussing upcoming plans for the weekend with his wife/assistant. Again, too, though initially I could feel neither the slice nor the needle deftly tucked in then out, in then out, I sensed it would hurt soon enough. It did. Very much. There were no painkillers that time. And though the public could clearly see what appeared to be a number of fly legs poking out of my bulging lower lip, the most anyone could muster was a pained look. Definitely not empathy. Surely their own pain at having to look at me.
Things simmered down after that until December. Then a recurring ache recurred, this time relenting not. Another wisdom tooth. Another trip to the chair where it was decided much could be done to save the tooth, that there was space for it (thanks to some childhood molar removal pain years prior). All he had to do was get the damn thing to quit rubbing the tooth in front of it. This would require the aid of an "appliance." We set a date. He assured me the pain would be minimal.
When the big day arrived, my pain was so great, I didn't care if the appliance he had in mind was a washing machine. In fact, I was so looking forward to the procedure, I neglected to look down as I descended the steps of my son's daycare. First one and then the other foot flew out in front of me. Like a cartoon character, I sailed through the air, landing full-weight my hip against first a step and then the concrete. I sat, stunned.
Sensing (but not seeing -- my eyes were slammed shut in agony) the tightening circle of toddlers gathering around me, amazed at my acrobatic skills, I knew the right thing to do would be to hop up and declare how little it hurt. I didn't. I couldn't. I could not move. A teacher's arms slipped around me, and she said in that teacherly voice, "You know, it's okay to cry."
So I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried. When I opened my eyes, they were greeted by 30 other pairs of eyes. The tears had had no effect. Not one child, least of all my son, gave any thought to consolation. They did not feel my pain. My pain, therefore, did not exist.
Someone suggested an ambulance. I grew defiant. Like one dazed in a car accident and looking for a distracting focus, I began to chant, "I must go to the dentist. I have to go to the dentist. I am going to the dentist."
I went to the damn dentist, all right. I told him of my new, far greater pain, literally, my pain in the ass. I suggested I might bite him if he wasn't careful. He looked at me the way Jeffrey Dahmer's guards must have regarded him, too, when he joked about using his teeth on their flesh. I quickly discerned that cannibals and dental patients do not evoke laughter for such punchlines, regardless of tone.
He numbed me to the point that I felt much like a Jack London character on an "I forgot the waterproof matches" day. He cranked open my mouth and placed a small metal rectangle, a single brace, an odd shaped staple, the iron lung of teeth -- you decide -- on top of the troubled tooth. The assistant stood by, sucking saliva with her dental Hoover. I sat filled with fear that I would swallow this $150 device and we would have to wait until I excreted it to begin again.
"Bite! Hard! Harder!! Haaaaarder!" he commanded. Though I felt little, if any, pain, my growing expertise warned me that in a couple of hours the end result of cramming metal dental floss between two teeth to keep them from humping would top all prior pain. Correct, as usual, King Friday. In fact, it began on the drive home as the metal sliced the tongue that could not help but go back for more.
But wait, the good doctor had said little-to-no pain. Consequently, he has prescribed no painkillers. Sure, because I'd taken the last prescription sparingly (my personal drug experiences have taught me that the character on Mod Squad who jumps out a skyscraper window after one half-hit of acid was based on someone just like me) I've got a few back home. But soon the supply would be gone. I called and demanded more. The dentist responded no, there is no need, thus underscoring, yet again, my theory that unless you are in pain, you can't understand it. Also it pissed me off. What did he think I was, a junkie?
I called back, this time more threatening. Suddenly I recalled what a dental assistant said to me (why me?) the week prior. "I have to hurry to lunch. Heather has a one o'clock appointment and she's a pain in the butt." I wondered what they'd say before my next appointment. "Oh, Miss No-Tolerance has an 11:15. Let's pretend to accidentally mis-shoot the novacaine and needle around in there for awhile."
It took fully a month, but eventually the pain subsided. During my convalescence, I reflected greatly on pain and its occurrence in humans. I realized that when I am not in pain that suddenly crops up (a charleyhorse, labor, a Dostoevskian toothache, a stubbed toe, razor nick to the leg) I look for it. I have nine holes in my ear, one in my navel, and a tattoo that didn't exactly tickle in the application. People love to ask me how much these things hurt. How should I know? If they mean how much it hurt me to accomplish the feats, well, it hurt. If they mean, how much would it hurt them? What can I say? It won't hurt me a bit. Unless we get the same hole or the same tattoo in the same spot at precisely the same moment, I won't understand at all, despite my own experiences. Even if the circumstances were just so, that old indefinable threshold thing would probably find one of us whining more than the other.
No matter how compas- sionate any of us are, we will never be more than spectators to another's physical pain. Helping someone through a rough spot is not really empathy. It might be martyrdom. Probably, more likely, a fear-induced attempt at good karma: a hope that you'll get soothing words and comforting strokes next time you get a knife stuck in your head. Other than that, it's all a squint. I mean, I can describe for you my 17 hours of labor and delivery, complete with details of a torn labia and all implied therein. I can tell you about the rusty nail I walked on 20 years ago. I even know, first hand, what it's like to have gravel picked out of your face with a metal brush for four hours after skidding across a street on your cranial front. Oh, I can make you wince, alright. But you'll never feel my pain. n
(Spike Gillespie is a woman of many talents. Besides being a Chronicle writer and a mother, she has been published in Playboy and Cosmopolitan.)