A Technique For Dealing With Pain

If this doesn't work, blame my Uncle Danny

Before I was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, I thought I had experience with pain. My first labor lasted over 22 hours, after all, and I didn’t have an epidural until after I’d been laboring for about 19 hours. My next three babies were born naturally. I’d helped my husband when he was having an acute gall bladder attack, in so much pain his hands were shaking, and had to have emergency surgery. And I’d also been there as a patient advocate for a friend who was suffering from acute pancreatitis. She was so sick she was vomiting bile and writhing in pain.

But the pain I felt when I had an eye pressure of 80 (normal is 10) is like nothing I have ever experienced or witnessed before. It was excruciating, like someone was stabbing me in my lower left eye with a kitchen knife, over and over and over again.