A Sickle Cell Sufferer's Guide, Part 4

You make your way to the hospital.  There was once a time when my hematologist could admit me without visiting the ER; that was many iterations of American health care ago. Now, it's a tromp through the red tape and the waiting room and the interminable anticipation of someone actually treating your pain.


Once you have passed the gates, gotten your bed, and the leading edge of the pain has been taken away, you have a decision to make.  Are you going back home with a prescription for something a little more powerful than Pez?  Or are you headed upstairs to a room?  I tend to opt for the room.  Painkillers won't hasten the end of a Sickle Cell crisis; they just make the journey tolerable.  It's the fluids and oxygen we need, friends.  Those are our saviors.


However you decide - and enduring a lengthy hospital stay is a topic for another time - it is now time to confront those emotions.  If there are family and friends willing to support you, use them.  If you have some spiritual connection/affiliation: use it.  If you've got a therapist, make the call.  There is no use to suffering in silence when doing so increases your suffering; you cannot confront this challenge alone.  When your greatest enemy is inside you, your greatest allies are to be found outside of you. 


And here are the platitudes you've already heard: it's not your fault.  This can't be helped.  You can still live a full and meaningful life.  There will be other chances to ________.  No, your life is not just an endless cycle of pain and recovery from pain (and later on, the side-effects spiraling down off of that cycle). So hard, when we're in the middle of it, to accept those as the truths they usually are - "usually," because sometimes there really won't be another chance to ________.  But then, "normal" people miss once-in-a-lifetime chances, too.


Take heart, at least enough to see yourself through this crisis.  Realize this, if you can't hold on to any of those other truths: the amount of pain you're in is having a profoundly negative effect on your emotions and on your ability to regulate them.  My short-term solution?  Gallows humor works every time.  Make it all a cosmic joke, and refuse to stop laughing at it. Come on!  You suffer from a debilitating condition for which the best solution is frequent exposure to addictive medication!  Somewhere, Something is rubbing its hands together and wondering how you're gonna handle it - are you gonna give It the satisfaction of caving all the time?  Naw, scoff in the face of pain - actually say "Scoff" a bunch of times and paint a scheming sneer on your face! Cackle like a villain!


Laugh through the pain - both kinds.  It's a temporary sop to your emotions; it works just as well and as poorly as the Morphine's working on your pain.