And other stories

After almost four hours in abject pain, you learn a few things about yourself and life:

• Sobbing in front of strangers is perfectly acceptable.
• So is begging for help and/or drugs.
• So is wandering the hallways in a hospital gown, moaning, ass out.
• Pain makes you delirious. And thus lacking in pride.
• Mom was completely right about always wearing good underwear.
• One is never too hedonistic for prayer.
• When you rip an IV out and it floods the room, a janitor doesn’t mop it up. A patient nurse (ha!) covers it with a thick, absorbent pad.
• Desperate tantrums make strong drugs miraculously appear.
• Whoever invented morphine/isolated it from opium *cough*Freidrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner*cough* (yes, I totally looked that up) deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Posthumously.
• Having a high pain threshold means jack shit.
• Being strapped to a stretcher after a rollover with full-body whiplash and a swollen face that slammed into a guardrail and was then squeezed into a neck brace three years ago is actually a walk in the park.