Bile

Arguments with your guts are rarely fun. My guts and I bicker a fair bit, like some old couple who realized shortly after the engagement they’d made a mistake but never admitted it. I call my guts “rancid.” They knock me flat. Mutual loathing, barely concealed. A demented little war.

You wouldn’t think so to look at me, five foot eight and zaftig, shoulders like a linebacker’s. My BMI threatens “obese” but usually hovers within “overweight.” I’ve hardly wasted away like someone with active Crohn’s, a condition that keeps an old and dear friend housebound.

Pain is harder than you expect. Even when it’s familiar and old. Each time I’d be admitted to hospital, I coddle a little hope that someone will diagnose me, give me an answer. ---Yes, Ms Butler Hallett, your intractable pain and nausea that’s broken through morphine and sometimes presents with elevated liver functions is caused by ...

Demerol is useless. Just makes me lie still.

Two weeks ago, I went to bed on a Saturday night and couldn’t get up on Sunday morning. Lay there till Sunday afternoon, until it was time for bile. Grey, dark green, copious and thick, from all available orifices. Burns. Scalds, really, carves its own paths through the other pain. Sweats and chills and spins. It settled, but another week passed before I felt safe to drive.

Between bouts, the pain feels like a rumour or some fever dream. Between bouts, all I care about the pain is that it’s gone.

Nineteen days of four to ten on the irritating pain scale docs ask you to use.

Familiar and old. Harder than I expect.