Since this thread on pain has gotten rather depressing, here’s the flipside: what’s the greatest relief you’ve ever felt? (I was going to use “pleasure” as the opposite of pain, but I fear that would spiral rapidly into TMI territory of the Triple-X kind.)
As for me, it was getting hooked up to a saline IV when I was 16, after becoming severely dehydrated due to a stomach virus that had me, well, losing solids and liquids from the top and bottom for 48 hours. I was so bad off that I became disoriented and barely able to get up out of bed.
My parents took me to the ER (I actually can’t even remember the trip), where they put this tube in my vein, and it felt… GREAT. Like being inflated with life. I could literally feel myself coming alive in a matter of minutes: my vision cleared (I hadn’t even realized it had blurred), I became much more alert, my appetite came back, all of it in about 10-15 minutes.
First time I had an ear blocked with wax and the doctor cleared it with a blast of water from a syringe – sweet, instant relief from something that had been driving me crazy.
When the anesthesiologist gave me the spinal (not an epidural, the other thing) before my C-section. I’d been sick for 38 weeks and 5 days with my twins, starting just after conception and continuing almost daily (the end was the worst, of course). Suddenly I had no pain at all. It was amazing!
The other time was when the nurse gave me a shot in the ass during a gallstone attack. I’d staggered into the ER doubled over in pain (the staff knew what was wrong with me just from the way I was walking). I walked out fully upright.
Drugs are good.
Morphine. Sweet, sweet morphine. It was my first fatal heart attack. They’d already injected me with streptokinase, lidocaine, heparin, demerol and who knows what else (I’m not responsible for any spelling errors in that list, hee hee).
I was still in massive pain and my heartbeat was wacky (I heard words like arrrythmia and tachycardic) when they got me up to cardiac intensive care. They gave me the morphine through one of the IV lines already in place in my right arm, so it was close to instantaneous. The pain went away, my breathing smoothed out, the arrhythmia faded away, and all the fear and panic went away. Like, NOW. I actually gave a contented sigh that was so obvious, that the nurse who’d been trying to get my boots off had to pause. He looked me in the eye, smiled and said, “Awesome shit, isn’t it?”. I had to agree. I mean, everybody there, except me, knew I was going to die. When that morphine hit me, I knew I was going to be just fine. It was the only time in my life I’ve had it, but it was awesome.
For me, relief has a name, and it’s spelled
H-Y-D-R-O-C-O-D-O-NE
After surgery, after a root canal, boy it’s great.
I only take one, or maybe half, for any given root canal or surgery, as I can just sense that I need to be careful with that stuff.
I get (well, used to get) really really bad menstrual cramps. The kind where you are in the fetal position crying. In 20 minutes, 800 milligrams of Ibuprofen will make them disappear completely. It’s like a miracle. But, it only lasts 4 hours. I used to set an alarm to wake up and take more so I wouldn’t have to get woken up from the cramps.
I found a permanent solution, though…childbirth. I get maybe, like, 2 mild cramps now per month and that’s it. If I knew about this, I wouldn’t have waited so long to have children!
IV Dilaudid, baby! In the ER, serious kidney stone attack, in tears and vomiting from the pain. The nurse comes in, and says she has pain medication, and I ask her what it is (I have a very bad reaction to Demerol, so I always ask), and she says it’s 2mg of Dilaudid. She put that syringe in my IV, and I swear, before she even pulled it back out, WHAM! It was like being hit by a hammer of relief.
I like morphine just fine, and it is pretty fast, but man, nothing spells instant relief like IV Dilaudid!
OK, I indulged in a bit of hyperbole there, given that I’m not actually dead. But that’s kind of how we rate my heart attacks. There were those two fatal ones (the first, where a neighbor who was a nurse in a cardiac ward elsewhere marveled at my still-living condition, and another, which was WAAAAY worse). Then, there were a couple of pretty nasty ones, and four which were relatively minor, compared to all the others.
I’m in the hospital, zoned out from something (Demerol?) but still staggering my way to the bathroom down the hall (for some reason, my room had no bathroom) and trying to pee. Every 5 minutes or so.
After about a million years of this (the accounts receivable lady wanted me to sign some forms, and I was so zoned out all I could manage was a mumbled “not now”) I finally stopped by the nurses’ station. I thanked them for the (Demerol?) and while it was making my head float beautifully to the ceiling, it wasn’t doing anything for the pain.
Then they gave me some other drug. It started with a T, I think there was an X somewhere in the middle, and I would have married it on the spot.
Except for a bit of a headache the next day, I was fine. Except that’s when I realized the Atkins Diet was not for me.
norinew, Ivylad has Dilaudid in his morphine pump. I’m afraid it doesn’t help much with his back pain.
Was it, by chance, Toradol? Toradol is an NSAID, non-narcotic. But it is very effective for kidney stone pain.
I’m really sorry to hear that. It always amazes me how totally differently different people react to the various drugs. I know some people who would give their right arms for some Demerol, but all it ever does to me is make me puke. I hope he finds some relief soon.
Quite possibly. All I know is that I floated the rest of the day. You know what else I like? Nitrous Oxide. I’ve had a couple of procedures at my dentist where they gave me Nitrous Oxide. It was like taking a nap, only not, and after they shut off the gas I was alert, rested and raring to go.
Unfortunately not. Apparently there is scar tissue growing around the nerves…scraping it away (surgery) will only make it grow back faster. he’s got Oxycodone and other pills, and all they can do is try to manage the pain so it’s not quite so debilitating.
But that’s kind of how we rate my heart attacks. There were those two fatal ones (the first, where a neighbor who was a nurse in a cardiac ward elsewhere marveled at my still-living condition, and another, which was WAAAAY worse). Then, there were a couple of pretty nasty ones, and four which were relatively minor, compared to all the others.