Pain

“Like a bolt out of the blue.”

We know what that means. We use it to describe an unexpected event. A young girl walks across the grass in the park under a clear, blue sky and is knocked off her feet by the electrical shock of lightning searing through her body. We don’t even think of the phrase as describing something like that.

We say we were “struck by lightning” when an event puts us off balance emotionally. The boss says, “Pick up your things and leave the building You’re fired.” Or the person you’ve been married to for 25 years says, “I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I want a divorce.”

But have you ever thought about how it feels to be jolted by sudden, horrific physical pain?

It happened to me Tuesday. I’ve become accustomed to dialysis. At the beginning of the procedure, two needles are stuck into my left arm, one into the artery, the other into a vein. As the needle pierces the skin, it hurts. I take a deep breath. Blood squirts out into the tubes attached to the needles. The technician connects the tubes to the dialysis machine. After the first thrust of the needle into my flesh, I feel uncomfortable but not in pain. I pick up my magazine to read for the next three hours and fifteen minutes, ignoring the needles in my left arm just as I ignore the elastic glove on my right fingers which makes it difficult to turn the pages in the New Yorker.

My arm is a row of needle marks. If I ever get stopped by a cop, he will think I am a drug addict.

On Tuesday the technician decided to try sticking the needle into the artery in a new spot. “Ready?” he said. I took my deep breath. The needle struck a nerve. It was if I had been struck by lightning. Or, as if he was trying to electrocute me. I felt as if my blood was on fire down to my little finger. It was not pain. It was PAIN.

I screamed.

With my right hand I grabbed the hand of the nurse standing next to me. I felt hot tears gushing down my cheeks. The technician twisted the needle. The searing pain eased. Now I just had pain around the needle.

The nurse said, “You held my hand so tight you hurt me.” She laughed.

I said, “I didn’t hurt you a tenth as badly as he hurt me.”

My arm hurt. I picked up my magazine but couldn’t concentrate. I turned to my private television screen. Usually I tune to CNN to keep track of the time. This afternoon I used my right hand to flip through channels, searching for a program to distract me. I found a rerun of Bonanza.

After I came home I thought about pain. It is impossible to feel another person’s physical pain. Only if you have had a similar experience can you empathize.

The same is true of other types of experience. Only a person who has lost a job can know the emotional devastation from being fired. Only a person who has lost a spouse through death or divorce understands the trauma – and in many ways, divorce is worse than death.

Some experiences I try to imagine, but I cannot. I have not experienced the pain caused by the death of a child