No, I Don’t Want You To Take Away My Pain
There is no need for anyone in America to feel any pain.
The speaker was a well known radio talk show host. He was talking about pain medication. How given the option, he wants hospitals to take away the pain.
When I was a kid, I got sick. I mean, really sick. Being sick, they gave me medication to take away my pain. It’s been a long time, but I think it was five 50 milligrams prednisone tablets, five times per day. Even as a 12 year old kid, I knew that was a lot. It took away away the pain. It took away all of it. And I hated it.
Taking that much prednisone has effects on a growing boy. The doctors told me that I would probably lose 5″-6″ off my height. That’s important to a boy with tall brothers. But, it wasn’t the loss of height that scared me. It was the loss of control. The loss of sensation. The pain let me know that I was feeling.
I remember walking down the hallway in my parents’ house. As I turned to go into the kitchen, I felt my brain continuing down the hallway into the living room. I hated the feeling. I preferred the pain to the numbness the drugs gave me.
Don’t take away my pain.
On June 12, 2008, my father died. It wasn’t unexpected. I got to say goodbye. We had both been close and distant. His death, like the death of many older people who suffered chronic illness, was a relief. But, it was also a loss. It was painful. I had to face many of the issues that fathers and sons deal with as the sons grow into men. I had to face the reality that our relationship was done growing. What was left was what it was. I was good with that, but there was also pain. There still is.
Don’t take away my pain.
Last year right around this time, my daughter lost a baby. My grandson Bruce, was a month away from his due date. My daughter and son-in-law were devastated. After 20 weeks they stop calling a failed pregnancy a miscarriage and they call it a stillbirth. You bury stillborn babies. He is buried, not too far from where I live in Utah. We needed to be there for my daughter. Her pain was immeasurable. Ours only slightly less so.
Don’t take away my pain.
Pain helps us heal. Pain helps us know that we’ve been somewhere, known someone, felt something.
To have all pain taken away is to die. Pain helps us know we are alive.
Don’t take away my pain.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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