By Tom Parker, Guest Columnist

Some things you never forget. Your mother’s love, your favorite teacher, your first home run (oh, that’s right, I’m 61 and that still hasn’t happened yet), your first date, your first kiss and your wedding.

Christmas to the Parker family is also memorable for many reasons. My delightful wife and I have always sought to make Christmas a precious time for our family. We listen to Christmas music off and on throughout the year, but nonstop in the fall and winter. Bing Crosby and Karen Carpenter mellifluously bless our home with the glorious sounds of Christmastime.

So why do I not remember a season of joy that just ended a month ago?

For several weeks, I had been experiencing pain and an inability to fully empty my bladder. I have quite a few health problems, so I just chalked this up as just another one and pretty much ignored it as it continued to get progressively worse.

My wife and son were on a long trip to take my youngest daughter back to college. I was home alone and finally felt the need to call my doctor about the urinary retention. My doctor’s sagacious nurse urged me to immediately go to the ER, so I called for an ambulance.

I was in St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany for almost a week while an interminable number of tests were conducted to determine what was wrong. I was not allowed any of my normal medications, pain or otherwise, or food or liquids while the initial tests were conducted. Nothing whatsoever passed my lips.

When my normal medication regimen finally resumed, I found out very quickly that I had to specifically request an oxycodone tablet when meds were dispensed or I wouldn’t get one.

Which leads me to very distinct memories of my roommate for the rest of my stay. A very brawny young man of 30 or so, a massively-muscled professional bodybuilder, was wheeled into the room and into the next bed. He was just out of elective bilateral double knee replacement surgery. Forgive me for listening as his mother and wife conversed waiting for him to come out of anesthesia.

PNN readers are all too acutely aware of how pain medications are no longer properly given for serious conditions -- which would seemingly include bilateral double knee replacement. As my compatriot emerged from anesthesia, it was very audibly obvious that he was quite understandably in unimaginable agony. Multiple nurses and techs rushed in and out, and at one point a resident was summoned as the young man was having difficulty breathing.

There was serious conversation about rushing him back into surgery when I heard a loud thump. My roommate had hit his head against the headboard, knocking himself out. His relatives argued with the nurses and resident about what pain medicines should be administered during his recovery.

We live in an ungodly, strange and insidiously cruel perverse world!  When medical professionals seriously consider Tramadol as the most viable and appropriate medicine at such a time, we have reached a new low standard of medical barbarity in these United States of America.

Paging Dr. Sessions, paging Dr. Sessions….

Yes, Tramadol is a somewhat effective pain reliever for some people. But for an operation as critically complex as bilateral double knee replacement surgery?   It never was effective for me and it engendered extreme vomiting for several days.

The agonized screams of that young man over three days still haunt my sleep today -- hopefully, not again tonight.

All of us are familiar with the 1 to 10 pain scale and how it often seems wholly inadequate for describing the pain that many of us feel every day. When the young fellow awoke from his self-induced head to the headboard knockout, he was asked what his pain level was at that moment. Three numbers unmistakably rang out, loud, clear and true: “555! What the blank do you think?”

His anguish was finally lessened by multiple doses of Dilaudid, both orally and intravenously. He was also administered Celebrex for inflammation, and oxycodone. I was a very personally-interested witness to this for several days.

He and I left the hospital at almost the same time, me to go home with my beloved, and he to a rehabilitation facility nearby. His last pain attestation before leaving was “10 or 12.” I was utterly appalled to hear him say that “I will do it all over again” if he were unable to resume his bodybuilding career after rehabilitation.

Well, I have had my follow-up visit with my GP now. He renewed my oxycodone prescription without even asking me about it. For that, I am eternally grateful to God and to my kindhearted physician. He explained to me that he was very glad that I had listened to his nurse’s urging to go to the ER.

I asked him, “Why are my memories of Christmas just a month ago so very foggy?”

It was then my physician made it very clear to me, for the first time, that I had almost died from blood poisoning and kidney failure.

Tom Parker was born in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. He currently lives in the Albany region of frozen upstate New York with his wonderful Vermont wife of 30 years, Kelly Sue. They have four adult children. Tom has multiple spine problems, including severe cervical spinal stenosis, osteoarthritis, and was born with just one kidney.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.