Severe Pain But The Tests Say No
Feeling like a fraud on the ward
“You’re too young to be in here,” the similarly aged male doctor tells me with a charming smile.
I try to smile back and say thank you.
He goes on to tell me that my blood and urine tests have come back normal. He’s not too concerned.
But he can tell I’m in pain, so he’s going to keep me in overnight, put me on some IV fluids and meds, nil by mouth, and arrange for me to have an ultrasound scan in the morning.
Several people have come to ask me for my full medical history. They all scribble notes and then disappear, leaving me to once again lapse into sleep.
I can’t stay awake. The pain meds have taken the edge off, and I’m sleeping day and night. Apart from the intermittent visits from PPE-clad nurses who jab thermometers in my mouth and enormously limb-crushing digital blood pressure cuffs around my arm.
The nurse couldn’t find a vein.
My arm feels like a pin cushion.
When she eventually found one, it was in my right arm, with the cannula right in the fold of my inner elbow.
Every time I move, the alarm on my drip machine goes off.
I’m told I have to lay with my arm straight and still. Ugh.
I’m only forty-six and feel that vitality and reliable good health are failing me with increasing regularity.
Along with thousands of other women, I’ve been on the waiting list for Gynaecology for over a year now. Even though there are increasing symptoms, I’m told that I must continue to wait.
Even though I’ve been told that I can’t have HRT until I’ve seen a Gynaecologist, I must continue to wait.
But this is different.
Sudden onset severe pain in the upper abdomen and back.
There are initial concerns about pancreatitis or gallstones, but the blood work says no.
The hospital porter is young and fit. He’s taking me to my ultrasound scan in a wheelchair.
I feel like a fraud.
I don’t need to be wheeled anywhere.
Yet I’m told it’s far across the other side of the building.
The young porter wheels me at great speed through the hospital corridors. Part of me wants to shout “Wheeee” like I’m six again.
Part of me worries that I’ll hit a bump and fly out of the chair face-first on the shiny tiles, and I bite my tongue from the urge to ask him to slow down.
Halfway between a child and an elder. Undecided on which stance to take, I choose to be still, quiet, and sensible – somewhere in the middle.
I try to smooth my bed-head hair down.
I slept in my clothes in the hospital bed last night, with a thin blue waffle-patterned blanket for comfort and warmth.
The other option was one of those hospital gowns with the surprise peep show slit up the back. I’m somewhat glad I didn’t agree to wear that now.
I’m wheeled through day patient waiting rooms by a twenty-something porter.
I’ve kept my modesty, at least.
When we arrive for the ultrasound, a stern-looking blonde lady tells me to breathe in, hold it, and breathe out. Over and over again.
There have been advances in healthcare. They’ve discovered how to warm the lubricant so that instead of a cold, wet, sticky shock, you get a strangely pleasing, warm, silky sensation on your skin.
It’s hurting quite a lot as she applies pressure below my rib cage, right where the pain has been.
But before long, she’s wiping the silkiness off my skin, telling me with a stern tone that matches her face, that she can’t find anything untoward.
I thank her and mutter something about how odd that is given the pain I’ve been in the last few days.
She continues to look at her screen, dismissively.
I feel like a fraud.
Now I’m being wheeled (fraudulently) in that wheelchair again by the same young and fit porter.
Damn, he’s asked me how the ultrasound went.
I concede that it’s good news and bad news.
The good news is there’s nothing wrong.
The bad news is that it doesn’t explain why I’ve been in chronic pain for days.
I’m back in the ward with real patients.
You can’t be only yards away from someone else, separated by a flimsy fabric curtain, and not hear the conversations that go on.
I’m surrounded by women who are in hospital because they need some part of their bodies taken away. Many are awaiting a call from the surgeons that it’s their turn to go under the knife.
It makes me wonder what they thought they might need to cut away from me.
It looks increasingly like I’m going to be spared from the need to have anything removed.
And for that, I’m grateful.
And yet, I’m now sitting here feeling like maybe I shouldn’t be here.
As it now stands, I seem to have a phantom pain that doesn’t show up on any of the recommended tests.
Maybe my pain threshold is low.
But that can’t be right. I birthed my daughter three years ago with only gas and air. Plus, they gave me an episiotomy and ventouse – still with only gas and air – and I lived to tell that tale.
Maybe, like with Peri-Menopause, I’m just at that age where I need to learn to put up with a host of inexplainable pains and symptoms, largely without complaint.
I don’t want to be the girl who cried wolf, and when I’m really poorly one day, there will be a note in red ink on the front of my file saying, “THIS PATIENT IS A PHONY.”
I’m sitting here trying not to gaslight myself.
This pain is real.
This nausea is real.
This enormous fatigue is real.
I might not understand why the pain is there, but I must stop telling myself I’m making it up.
Self-advocating when I’m ill has always been hard. I’ve been too quick to nod my head and concede to doctors when they tell me that my pain is normal and I should just go and take a paracetamol.
I nearly died at the age of thirty-two because I wasn’t firm enough and sure enough of the messages my own body was trying to give me to convince doctors that I needed to be investigated.
Life is a paradox.
I’m now advocating for my pain with nothing to show for its existence.
Navigating midlife is tough for a number of reasons.
As a Gen Xer, I’m told that older generations of women just got on with it.
They didn’t make a fuss.
I feel like I’m becoming increasingly invisible and prone to taking up space in a world that doesn’t recognize the concerns of women with crepey skin and an increasing number of grey hairs.
While I sit and write this in my little hospital bed, awaiting a visit from the doctor, who seems to have forgotten me because I have nothing to show for my symptoms, I look across at the elderly woman in the bed opposite.
Her hospital gown and her furrowed brow show that she is awaiting the loss of an internal organ sometime soon.
I hear the groans of other women recovering from the loss of something precious to them – a uterus, an ovary or a gallbladder.
I am awaiting a disparaging look from the medical professionals while they unhook me from my tubes, to send me on my way.
I may not sound it, but I am grateful for such an outcome.
This little episode has taught me that whilst I may not be able to control my health entirely, I must be more responsible for it.
I must avoid reaching for foods that trigger inflammatory responses (which is sadly, almost all the foods that I love the most). I must cut down on those ‘treats’ that are anything but; Less full fat lattes, and more hot water with a slice of lemon. Finally, I must move my aging body more.
I must also continue to self-advocate for my pain, even if and when there is no medical reason for it.
But by the way, I’m still here in the ward, awaiting a diagnosis or at the very least an explanation for my pain.
I thought I was going to be sent home tonight, but the nurse has just told me I need to order breakfast now in time for the morning rounds.
Maybe they know something I don’t.
N.B. — Writing this note five days later from the comfort of my home. (Bliss). I’ve been discharged with a diagnosis of gastric-lining thickening leading to obstruction — thankfully benign in nature. My symptoms were apparently textbook ‘gallbladder disease’, but the doctors couldn’t find anything to prove that theory. The best thing to come from my several-days-stay in the hospital was that I was also able to advocate for my gynae problems and they’ve bumped me up the waiting list to see the consultant. Win!
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