Still alive. Ah well, the odds were never in death’s favor. Today, I’ll document for absolutely no one, the events that transpired in the recovery room, moments after my waking from hernia surgery.

The nurse was Filipino. Thank God for those Filipino ladies; if it weren’t for them, I think we’d have no nurses. Anyway, this Filipino nurse was a real hard ass.
Her first words to me (that I recall): “Lucas? What’s your pain level?”

I groan, “Eight.”

“You just told me seven.”

“Okay, I’ll give you seven.”

“More fentanyl!” she calls. “Breathe, Lucas. Deep breaths, in and out.”

This is when I decide that if I don’t make sure to breathe, I’ll pass out and die. So I breathe.

The nurse sits across from me at her computer, tapping keys and checking my pain level (which isn’t budging) and barking at me to breathe!, because apparently I’m so doped up, I keep forgetting to.

When I’m not forgetting to breathe, I am moaning and tapping my heel against the gurney, surprised at how much pain I’m in.
There’s another guy, other side of the curtain from me. I can’t see him, but I picture a rolley polley fella eight or ten years my elder, short and non-muscular—the sort of guy you’d expect to find in a hernia repair place. Mister short and round is throwing a real whine-fest over there, and between my own moans, I keep thinking how much of a baby I’m sharing this recovery room with.

After two more boosts of fentanyl fail to relieve, the nurse calls for heavier artillery, an obscure compound unpronounceable by non-nurse folk. Something like a B-52 drops a pool of numb into my IV, dousing me to a five.

Which is better than seven. And all is well, and all manner of things shall be well…

”Lucas! Open your eyes! Breathe!”

I think back, and now I understand that my Filipino breathing coach wasn’t worried I could die from lack of breathing. She just needed my butt out of that space so she could make room for the next slob. She was herding cattle. Damn good at it, too.
I take two lessons from this event.

A: I guess I’m not ready to be dead. Evidence above––the whole breathe or die thing.

2: The intensity of pain we feel has much to do with the story we hitch to it. Was my post-op pain really ever an eight, or even a seven? Probably not. It seemed worse than it was because I was caught off guard, like waking suddenly from a restful slumber to find a wild badger gnawing at your gut, and you didn’t even know badgers lived in your neighborhood.

I wonder what this means for psychological pain. How much of my bone-deep weariness is about the story I unknowingly embrace about weariness? The story of—Life isn’t supposed to be so difficult. I shouldn’t have to work so much. People think they know what it means to work hard, but they have no idea. I should be an the Wikipedia page of hard workers. Woe is me! What level is your psychological pain? Seven? Eight? Ha! I passed eight sometime during Covid and zoomed right off the pain skill, into eleven territory.

Okay, pal. Don’t be dramatic. Give the storyteller a rest, why don’t you? You do work too much, and you ought to make changes. But you can’t change a damn thing if you’re hooked on the story of an overworked victim. You are no victim. You’re simply human, flesh and blood. No more, no less.