an ER account

This morning I knew something was wrong when the pain under my left ribs sent me to the bathroom floor. I spent the next hour shifting around trying to make it stop and trying to hold in whatever was in my stomach. Well, the cold bathroom floor felt about the same as the emergency room floor. I couldn't help but wonder what had touched that floor previous to my face. And the vomitting with their white popcorn buckets while they took my info was quite different from that over my toilet. "On a scale from one to ten how is your pain level?" they asked. I said 8, but that was before I noticed the pain scale.
Tears were at the 10 and I had already cried twice. Well, I shimmied into my gown and moved between bed and cold floor looking for comfort that didn't come. After x-rays and a cat scan they informed me that my kidney stone was now moving on. Well, at least I wasn't dying. And the morphine went down quite nicely. That's about the time when my beloved friend (and caretaker for the day) began taking pictures to document the experience. I've spent the day enjoying what I would normally take for granted, which is to lie on my couch without pain. And I thought, sometimes without the pain I don't know what's to appreciate.