Made in Richmond

As my impending doom is the subject of much commentary on this here Internets, I thought I’d clarify something.

I am not afraid of pain. At all. In fact, I have a pretty high threshold for pain. Any yelps or tears come from not knowing what’s going or being startled. The thing I’m afraid of is not knowing exactly what’s going to happen in a situation.

This might stem from my slight tendency to demand complete control over everything. Maybe.

When I got my tattoo, the only thing that made me nervous was not knowing how *much* it was going to hurt. I knew it was going to hurt because, hello, it’s a tattoo, but I was constantly asking for a comparison. Like tetanus shot or cat scratch? Incidentally, he said “A cat scratch over and over again for an hour.” And he was correct.

A couple years ago, I had a mole removed from my belly. I asked the doctor to just make sure he explained everything was doing and give me an estimate of the pain. He told me the numbing agent would feel like a bee sting and that during the actual removal, I would just feel pressure and then pulling. Again, correct.

On the other side, when I had my ovarian nightmare this summer, that pain was neither expected nor understood. I did not expect to blackout while sitting across from Mary at Starlite and I didn’t understand why an invisible hot poker was stabbing me in my abdomen as I sat crying in Patient First. Once I knew what was going on, everything was manageable.

I just can picture myself during childbirth…

“So, will it be like a watermelon covered in fire? Or acid? Or fire and acid?”