Ever since the accident in January, my pain spectrum had been manageable to an extent minus a few times. For a person with a low pain threshold. I can say I have come a long way in tolerating pain. But when Lightning Mc Queen strikes I lose it all.

( for those who don’t know, I have named my shooting pain ( neurological pain ) after the Pixar movie – “Cars” Character “Lightning Mc Queen” 😄

The night of the Vac change, I noticed that lightning Mc Queen would surface now and then. With a slight twitch of my body, he would be up and would start taking laps between my knee and ankle with lightning speed. Sometimes going at it for hours. This usually happens when the effects of the painkiller subside by night. Those nights it was like the piston cup race happening on my leg with multiple lightning Mc Queen’s racing.

The night of the 2nd Vac change, as mentioned in the previous post I had just managed a few winks of sleep. Anoop had just left replacing the canister, I was slowly getting back to sleep that’s when things started to get worse. Lighting Mc Queen had emerged again!! In pain, I shut my eyes tight trying to hold myself from screaming until I couldn’t bear the pain no more. I let out a huge scream. It was so loud that it made my parents in the other room hurry back to my room. My family stood around me staring helplessly. My mother and my partner held my hand and kept trying to console me in vain.

I was dazed and lost. I guess this is what excruciating pain does to you. The worst is when I started hallucinating, although I could hear my family asking me if the pain settled and telling me to try to get some sleep. I couldn’t answer them. I was disoriented to the core. I couldn’t close my eyes, coz when I did, the accident scene flashed right before my eyes. I kept shaking my head frantically, to shake the images from my eyes. At times I would sit up and stare at the fixator, the tube going to the vac machine. Then would lay down. I kept doing this often, at times shouting out “Truck!” “Lights!” and eventually shouting “ Ya Allah! my leg !! my leg !! My family tried to calm me down. They knew I was having a hallucination attack. I could hear them calling me but all I could see was the road from the ground up, seeing my leg mangled in front of me and then looking up to the sky, crying out to Allah.

I knew I was in my bedroom staring at the ceiling but at the same, I was reliving the incident that very night! I don’t remember how long that lasted but it was the strangest thing ever! I was given meds to help me calm down and sleep. After which I started to settle down. What had started as a few jolts of pain, took me back to the night of the accident when the pain reached its peak.

It was one night I wouldn’t forget. Later mentioning this to my doctor he said, extreme pain can do that to me or anyone who’s gone through trauma.

After that incident, I have had lightning mc queen visit me at times but he never stayed on with such gravity as he did that eventful night. I was once asked about naming the shooting pain after the race car character Lightning Mc Queen.Why name something like pain by the protagonist! I mean he is the good guy and how could I associate him with pain? Well, I initially just called it coz of how the pain felt, zipping from one point to another on my leg very fast and abrupt like how lightning would strike. But later as I kept referring to the pain with a good name, surprisingly I could kinda a diminish the hateful or fearful side the pain brought. Whenever Mc Queen strikes I would squint my eyes trying to bear the pain and even though I would give out a cry every now and then, I would have the image of this cocky red race car that I adored a lot as a character in the movie. 😊 I guess I have a weird way of looking at it. Now if you ask me did it help in reducing, my pain? Err… no but it helped not to fear the pain. Accept it as part of the healing process and have a conversation with him once in a while! 😊