Pain | VQR Online

My father was never one to complain. On the morning of the day he died, an ulcer he'd suffered from for years, and left untreated, ruptured and began to bleed. Two days later I met with the town coroner. He told me the end had been painless, that, as his life leached away, my father would only have felt increasingly weak and light-​headed. The coroner, trying to make me feel better, was lying. By any other account, when an ulcer perforates and blood, bile, bacteria, and partially digested food begin to spill into the abdominal cavity, you feel as if a knife has just been buried in your guts. You might faint. You might vomit blood or something that looks like coffee grounds—​blood oxidized black by stomach acid. Or your body shuts down completely, total collapse its only remaining response to the shock and agony. But my father, on the day he died, carried his burning, pleading stomach with him on his morning commute and worked his usual day at the plant, seven in the morning till seven at night. He told one of the other engineers he wasn't feeling well and then, schematics piled on his desk, worked straight through lunch. I don't imagine he would've felt much like eating. On the way home, a twenty-​minute drive, no longer able to endure his pain—​or finally, in privacy, willing to succumb to it—​he pulled to a soft shoulder and came to a stop. Six months earlier he'd leased a brand new Chevy Impala. He loved that car. It was one of the few...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs