Pain-God

After my appendectomy, I asked the anesthetist about how my depth of anesthesia was monitored.

"We monitor processed EEG waves, frontal lobe activity that quasi-linearizes balances between GABA and an index value that documents your sedation. Above a certain number, it assures deep-enough sedation."

"Oh," I said.

Being a neuro-researcher, I understood: they monitor the brain's inhibition via the balance of the neurotransmitter, gamma-aminobutyric acid, and go by its bispectral index. Cool.

"A bispectral index of zero is brain dead," she added. "90-100 is wide awake. For your appendectomy, you were at "45"--perfect general anesthesia."

Very cool.

"Can I borrow this monitor one day?" I asked.

She knew of my research, searching for the perfect pain-killer--effective, with no tolerance, dependence, or addiction. For me, the research was personal, suffering from chronic, debilitating pain, for which I had to choose either suffering or opioid adverse effects.

"Sure," she said. "Put me on your paper?"

"You got it!" This was a good deal: adding her at the end of the authors, all whose names began with me.

In my lab lived a glob of neurologic stem cells, no easy feat in today's environment. It had wires jabbed here and there, monitoring the waveforms of a rudimentary human brain. One with gaps, sure, but gaps I didn't really need.

We knew which wire evoked pain.

Pain. That was funny, looking at my little glob. Pain is a subjective awareness of unpleasantness. Extrapolated, it hurts. Turn it to 10--it becomes agony. We'd go to 11 if we could!

With my borrowed monitor, I provoked pain and watched. The bispectral index went to 97. It was suffering. Could it be awake? That is, was it aware-awake?

I tortured it for months but never found any magic pill. My paper was rejected. I often think about the pain I inflicted, but my little guy is long gone now, the failed experiment dimantled.

It's gone--its pain a thing of the past, like it never happened. Like I was never the pain-god.

Meanwhile, my pain continues. I'm hopeful for a discovery, because my pain matters. I suffer, and that's important. But what about when I'm gone? Like it never happened?

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AUTHOR'S NOTES or, the ruminations between the lines:

"He's in a better place now." "Her suffering is over." How many times have we heard this empty consolation? Does pain matter because it will be gone at some point? Did suffering matter? Does time mean it was like it never happened? Does suffering remain a part of our being, even when it's over? That is, is it ever over?

Where does pain fit into an afterlife belief, since eternity doesn't mean forever, but outside of time, all time's events still "a thing" outside of these linear temporal cross-sections through which we live our 3-D lives?

Does existence mean only now? If there's nothing after, did we even matter, like we never were at all? Did what we experience, love, suffer, or thrill, to add to some summation that sits elsewhere outside of our linearity? — and still a part of us? ...somewhere?

It's not much consolation for the person while they're in pain. Where does the suffering go? When it's passed, it doesn't mean it's undone.

***

The bispectral index is really a thing, used to make sure people don't wake up during general anesthesia. I know someone who had this happen and it is not a pleasant experience!

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"Pain-God," above, "borrowed" from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever that is. It has nothing to do with pain, but it seemed to depict well, in one picture, the sensibility I was trying to capture