Staying Mindful Through Unmanageable Intensity

How an unexpected trip to the ER helped me understand the mysterious process of holding the present

As my wife came abruptly to the stop sign, she already had her parents on the phone, telling them we’d shortly be at the ER.

I remember the conversation, but it was distant, like hearing her describe my symptoms from somewhere else.

Just a few minutes before, I had been found in the shower, writhing in pain, my face pale. She immediately knew that we would not be waiting this out; we needed answers right away.

With what strength I had, I pulled on my jeans, wincing with each tug. The pain in my abdomen had grown so unmanageable that any motion whatsoever was felt like a searing hot knife plunging further into my gut. I’d started having some unusual pain in my stomach the night before. But I’m a pretty healthy person, and besides the odd episode of heartburn, I don’t usually deal with anything resembling what kept growing more intense throughout the night.

The day started out stressful, with a phone conversation about some financial issues that didn’t end on a high note. My son had also come home earlier in the day with some anxiety from drinking one of those insane energy drinks that are neither energetic nor healthy. After he’d downed the drink late in the day, he found himself up at two o’clock in the morning with intense anxiety.

I hung out with him for an hour or so, helping him calm down and get to sleep, and then I started having my own problems.

At first, it was like a small, sharp prick in my stomach. I noticed the feeling but didn’t think much of it. Going to bed, I laid there as the pain grew steadily worse.

The rate of increase was concerning, and it began to consume me to the point of sitting fully up in bed.

Within a few minutes, my wife held me as my entire body shook with convulsions from the intensity. Shortly after that, I began to vomit violently.

Having seen my brother go through appendicitis many years ago, I knew to press on my lower right quadrant with a kind of popping effect, waiting for the rebound and any pain that might follow.

There was no pain, and I was not running a fever. My other thought was that this might be some kind of gallbladder issue. My dad has dealt with similar gastrointestinal problems, so I naturally wondered if that may have been the case.

I decided to wait through the night, soaking my sheets with sweat as I tossed and turned, unable to find any relief from the pain.

When morning came, I jumped in the shower, hoping to find some reprieve from the onslaught. When my wife found me, she had just returned from taking our youngest son to school.

She describes seeing me look the worst she’s ever seen. White as a ghost and unable to stand up, she jumped into action mode, giving me orders that we were immediately heading to the emergency room.

On the way to the ER, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. I kept moving in my seat, pushing down with my feet on the ground to brace myself against the bumps in the road. Each one was like another knife going into my belly.

Finally, we made it to the hospital, and I rode into the lobby in a wheelchair. Unable to speak my name and with closed eyes, I simply handed my license to the triage nurse. Thankfully my wife joined me just as other questions started. A flurry of activity followed, IV’s and drugs, tests, and a CAT scan.

As I slid into the scanning tunnel, hands overhead, warm dye flowing into my veins, up to my neck, and down into my legs, I began breathing methodically. Using what I’ve learned in the last two years of daily meditation practice, I was able to inhale into the panic, exhaling into the constriction of a small tunnel, extreme pain, and fluids being fed into my bloodstream.

Back in the waiting room, between the automatic inflation of my blood pressure cuff, and the coldness of IV fluids leaking into my arm, I drifted off into a pain laced sleep.

They’d recently given me some heavy-duty, intravenous pain medication, but this only brought my pain levels down a point or two. When I’d first come, I described my pain as a twelve out of ten, off the charts. By now, I was hovering around a six.

During this time, my wife was messaging friends and family. In what I can only describe as supernatural, there was a distinct moment when my pain inexplicably subsided, plummeting to almost nothing and staying there for about fifteen minutes. This brought tears to my eyes because it was the first time I’d felt any relief in over six hours.

The doctor performed some palpitations on my stomach, causing the pain to skyrocket again.

As the pain escalated again, I focused on trying to stay within the moment. I saw this as an opportunity to practice holding the moment, even through sharp intensity.

I would love to say that my practice worked and that I could move beyond the pain. I was not able to do this. The feeling was so utterly encompassing, I was ultimately at its mercy. At every turn, I felt thwarted, and my consciousness kept running for cover.

This is, by far, the most physically painful experience I’ve had in my adult life. And I’ve been stung by a Man ‘O War jellyfish, crashed on all kinds of things with wheels, and had lots of stitches in my feet from stepping on broken glass in a lake.

The doctor finally came back with the test results, and they were all negative. My liver was fine, bloodwork normal, EKG regular and my gut showed no signs of gallbladder problems or anything else concerning.

She said that I would need to follow up with a gastroenterologist for a possible ulcer, or it may have been merely an intestinal virus causing extreme inflammation.

When I finally returned to normal, it would be over twelve hours of continuous distress.

I’ve been thinking about what I can learn from this.

To start, I realized how essential pain can be to consciousness. On the one hand, it’s an important signal that forces us to take notice. But on the other, its power can sometimes become so overwhelming that we are simply unable to stay present, no matter how hard we try.

This is not a new revelation. There are many people who, unfortunately, know this reality all-to-well. But for me, this was a wake-up call, almost like a reset button for how I will live going forward.

While I’m working on following up on this situation’s cause, I am happy that it was not anything medically serious, and yet, I know that I need to reduce my stress and take even better care of myself.

Life has been absolutely overwhelming for almost everyone on the planet this year. I hear someone say something about the year being 2020 nearly every day. It’s practically become the new refrain for everything.

But there is some truth in this. We’ve experienced such radical shifts in our stability this year that I wonder if this experience is in some ways tied to a kind of dark stress, one that is not clearly visible but is being shuttled away into the subconscious.

We know that the body is where we hold anxiety and those things that we can’t deal with on an immediate cognitive level. The body registers these and carries them deep within. Sometimes erupting in searing hot emotional lava when we least expect it.

Knowing this, I am resolved to take things a little slower and do my best to avoid negative conversations and anything else that might stoke subconscious fires. I will take a break from alcohol and anything that might mask pain and opt for more healthy foods and better sleep. In short, I am going to pay attention to my second brain and hear what it was trying to tell me. Because apparently, I haven’t been listening well.