Vivid – Daily Prompt

If pain could be a vivid color, mine would be red. Screaming red. It hurts in one spot in my pelvic area, on my left side, like a red-hot branding iron has been plunged into me and twisted. One with barbs on it so it causes damage all around its intended target.

I have IC, a bladder disease that has no mercy. When I go into a flare-up, I feel everything within my bladder. I can feel how much urine is in my bladder, and though it may not be very much, I need to empty my bladder regularly to keep the pain down.

I measure my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being the least amount of pain I feel. I think most people measure their pain this way. However, I rate my pain in decimals. I am currently at a high 7, about 7.7. This gives me a little play room for my pain scale, because I am hurting a tremendous amount, but not enough to say I am an 8 which would be my own recommendation to go to the ER. I do not want to go to the emergency room, so I’m at a 7.7. I’m taking pain medication every 4 hours, a little closer together than recommended by my doctor, but he doesn’t have IC, so he doesn’t know what it feels like.

How can any pain management doctor judge our pain when they do not feel it? They must have a lot of empathy, and patience to deal with those of us that are in pain most of the time. My pain is usually a 2.5 to a 3. Just enough to remind me that I have a bladder disease but not enough to live on pain pills continuously. This current pain has me hindered in so many ways. I am rambling this blog post, just get to it written. I hope you will forgive me for not being on a good topic.

I will be better soon, or go to the doctor for cystoscopy with hydrodistention, where they fill my bladder a little bit past capacity and put in a camera and take pictures and then fill it again with medication before emptying it and waking me up. They get data on how bad the lining of my bladder is, how cracked it is and how deteriorated it is, the medication they put in is to numb me, but it doesn’t last long. I’ve had to have these done at least once a year in recent years and this frequency bothers me. I would rather not have them done at all, but it seems when I can’t shake a flare-up, that is the “go to” remedy.

If I don’t write daily, I will write when I can.

~Peace.