My Fiance’s Kidney Pain Earned Him Better Pain Meds Than My Labor
I don’t think anyone should EVER compare any kind of pain to labor, because no one — except mothers — have ever had to actually be in labor. My fiance did this over the weekend as we were out for a walk. Suddenly he fell to the ground.
”I feel like I’m in labor,” he moaned, lying on a neighbor’s lawn. ”This is the worst pain in the world.”
I actually laughed. Before my baby came out early, a year ago, I actually DID go into labor. (I’m one of the lucky ones who can say that I have had c-sections AND labor pains.) When people ask me what my labor pains felt like I simply say, ”It’s the most painful thing you could ever imagine.” So I didn’t, I’ll admit, take my fiance’s pain that seriously, even though he was on a neighbor’s lawn and had started to throw up.
”Should we go to the hospital?” I asked. I helped him get home, before the owner of Roots, whose lawn he was puking on, called their security. Even while I was in the back of the ambulance with him, I couldn’t believe he could compare what he was going through to LABOR, which is what he had started moaning again. When we got to the hospital, it was pretty clear to everyone immediately that he was having or passing a kidney stone. Kidney stones are VERY painful, I’m told.
What really got me was the treatment he received in the hospital. We weren’t in the hospital for more than five minutes when he was hooked up to an IV and the nurse was saying, ”I’m going to give you some morphine now,” to my fiance, who was walking around the room, moaning LIKE a woman in labor.
”I can’t get comfortable,” he kept saying, which held up the nurse from putting in the morphine. She stood by patiently waiting for him to stand still.
Two thoughts went through my mind. The first was, ”Just sit still so she can give you the drugs!” and, ”YOU’RE JUST GIVING HIM MORPHINE, LIKE THAT?”
Now, I like my drugs, when needed. After my c-section, I screamed bloody murder to the nurse when she told me I could only have Advil.
”I take ADVIL for headaches,” I screamed. ”I just had my stomach cut open!”
The nurse with my fiance, in the hospital over the weekend, whispered to me, ”Men can’t handle pain as well as women.” I laughed, like I was supposed to, but I was really pissed off. So if ALL the women having babies were men, then they’d get the good stuff and be treated like babies? I am a woman. I cry when I stub my fucking toe. Apparently, if you are a man and in pain, really no one wants to deal with you, so they give you the good stuff right away (something a volunteer at the hospital told me).
All the nurses catered to him like he was in labor or treated him as they should treat all women in labor. They really babied him and they weren’t rough with him, like the obstetrician on duty when I was in the hospital who before I could say, ”What are you doing?” or even, ”Your name?” had shoved his fingers up my vagina. I know that’s what they are SUPPOSED to do, but, really, TELL ME BEFORE YOU ARE SHOVING YOUR HAND UP MY VAGINA LIKE YOU’RE DIGGING FOR GOLD.
Everyone all women nurses told me that kidney stones are extremely painful. I wanted to ask, ”Really? As painful as labor and a c-section? I just want to check so when I have this argument later with my fiance I know what to say.”
The doctor sent my fiance home with enough painkillers that I considered how much money we could make, if instead of him taking them, we sold them on the streets. In the meanwhile, I’m thinking of baby names for this stone. Because it’s gotten so much more attention than I did, when I was ACTUALLY in labor, so it really deserves a name.
(photo: cupcakeenvy)
