BluE Scrubs

I came home tired as always but with a smile on my face. The on call wasn’t what you would call a heavy one, but I was kept on the trot most of the night.

At 3 am (what did I say about 3 am), I was called for an epidural. The lady, a primip (carrying first child) was 4 years younger than me. Very pretty with a very nice lordosis in her lower back. It was malleable enough to curve out, splaying open the intervertebral space, making it easy for me to put the Touhy needle.

Physically, she’s a slim lady and her bump was to envy for. Not a single stretch marks. Very cooperative, and all for making my job easier.

She wasn’t a typical screaming woman in pain. She was more subtle, more appropriate. All I could I hear was a tstttt and her eyes watered with every contraction. She looked like an injured dove. Her husband a very well mannered gentleman would hurry over to hold her hand with every wince she made with her eyes closed and eyebrows screwed..

I was thinking that pain is not dissimilar to electricity. You can augment it. Amplify it or even switch it off completely like a wounded soldier in the battlefield.

Pain is a signal. The more acknowledged a pain is by the loved ones, the better one can cope with the pain itself. Display or manifestation of pain in my opinion is to a certain degree related to how secure you are in a relationship with your loved ones, the people that matter to you.

The more insecure one is the more florid the statement of pain, wailing, shouting, demanding, blackmailing, threats and such can snowball into something huge and nasty. These people feel like the pain that they suffer gives the ticket to abuse those around them who care. I don’t want to imagine what it must feel like inside somebody who fakes symptoms. Must be very isolated and lonesome AND emotionally disturbed.

Lack of attention or appropriate response to displayed pain on the other hand will give birth to something like Munchaussen syndrome whereby people fake symptoms to seek attention be it by themselves or by proxy i.e by making somebody else adopt the sick role. Usually a child. The symptoms will be made worse if the core problem never gets addressed properly. Maybe it’s insecurity, maybe it’s dissatisfaction, maybe it’s grief.

Many couples thanked me before but not as genuine as this pair. Their smiles complete each other’s. I left the lady pain free and I was in a pleased mode (until my bleep went off at 4 which warrants a post on it’s own, as my mood then was magically transformed to less pleased).

Every time something as beautiful as this happened, a picture of a boat without me in it floating through sea of trial and tribulations, stroboscopes onto a white screen in my head. Is it on the way to pick me or have I missed it altogether?