There are a handful of events in human existence that, when encountered, fundamentally shift perspective by connecting you to the greater experience of the human race. Having children (or so I hear), is one example. Falling in love, another. Grief. Wonder.

And pain. Physical pain.

Until a few days ago, I would have told you I’d experienced a few bouts of 10/10 physical pain in my lifetime. A serious ballet dancer in another life, I broke both my feet when I was 18, which I thought was a 10/10 until, at 25, a gynecologist hit my cervix during an IUD insertion. That oopsie led to two extra hours in the doctor’s office, curled and crying in the fetal position because I was in too much pain to walk. No migraine, no cut or burn in the kitchen, not even the aftermath of a car accident has come close to the agony of that IUD mishap.

When I blew out my knee on April 2, I remember thinking about how little it hurt compared to the damage I knew I’d done. An MRI confirmed the carnage: a full ACL tear, meniscus tear, burst Baker’s cyst, and a collection of Grade 2 sprains, bone bruises, and “marrow leakage.”

Still, when people asked if it hurt, I shrugged and answered, “Sort of?” I was in pain, sure. But it was manageable, tolerable. I thought of a 1995 study that found that ballet dancers have a significantly higher pain tolerance than non-dancers and figured my blasé attitude toward my knee pain (and kitchen burns, lost toenails, and cold water tolerance) had something to do with spending my youth dealing with the discomfort of pointe shoes filled with my own blood.

I rehabbed my knee for six weeks before my ACL surgery, ensuring that the leg was as strong as possible going into it. I figured the post-operative pain would be worse than the injury itself, but not so much that I couldn’t handle it. Around 175,000 ACL surgeries are performed every year. On average, that’s 480 people per day. I was going to be fine.

In times of injury, the body can go into shock. A drop in blood pressure reduces the flow of oxygen and causes blood vessels to constrict. Adrenaline is released which increases the body’s pain threshold. In some scenarios, shock is life-threatening. In others, like when I was in a car accident in 2014, shock simply delayed the pain.

The threshold of shock varies from person to person, scenario to scenario. Based on anecdotes and brief research, it seems most likely to happen during a sudden trauma as opposed to, say, a mixup with post-operative drugs, leading to anesthesia gradually wearing off without any painkillers in my system.

When I was 25 and curled up on my gynecologist’s medical table, I didn’t think it was possible for the body to feel that much pain without going into shock. That pain has been seared in my mind for thirteen years, mentally helping me through pesky accidents and injuries because as bad as whatever it was, it wasn’t like that.

And this wasn’t like that either. This was worse.

This was four deep cuts into skin, muscle, and bone being lit up by a femoral nerve that was coming back online. This was a quadriceps muscle paralyzed both by the nerve blocker and the missing quad tendon harvested for my ACL. This was modern Frankenstein, butchery in the name of medicine. This was the part you’re supposed to do with opioids, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen.

Instead, I rode out the night without the right painkillers, feeling the entirety of what it’s like to be sliced open and sewed back up. Though my mother was a phone call away, I didn’t yet know what went wrong and figured there was nothing she could do. I didn’t want her to see me in the state I was in, anyway. The sounds someone makes in that level of pain are different than your standard cry. It is guttural, more of a wail than a sob, laced with desperation and a wordless beg for mercy.

At one point I was sitting up, leg hanging off the side of the bed, attempting to move myself counterclockwise so I could lie down again. But the pain was too great to get the leg over the bed.

My mind jumped to the battlefields of the Revolutionary War. I saw a field, with soldiers in red coats fighting the Patriots, bayonets perched on the ends of muskets. I saw the blood-soaked ground, scattered with bodies sliced through the abdomen, the shoulders, the legs. I thought: this is what it’s like to be maimed in battle. Even amid the greatest pain I’d ever experienced, I felt a connection to the human race I’d never felt before. Since the dawn of humanity, how many people have felt this pain? Were they in shock, or did they endure every cut?

I eventually got myself prone, and then, into some variation of a side sleeping position that provided a minuscule level of relief. I remembered Ekhart Tolle’s directives on pain from The Power of Now, and how he said that in times of pain—including physical pain—be the one who observes.

“Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze it. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of ‘the one who observes’, the silent watcher. This is the Power of Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.”

— The Power of Now, page 40

I also remembered how, when I was a little girl, my mother would walk me through meditations to lessen the pain of migraines. With my head on her lap, she would ask me to focus on the pain in my head and imagine it as a ball of light. Then, in a soothing voice, she said to imagine the ball getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes the ball would dissolve into a pinprick, other times she would have me give it away to an angel. It always made me feel better, at least until we got to a bottle of Advil.

This time, I had no physical ability to get to the collection of painkillers on my kitchen counter and hours to wait before I could call my doctor. I certainly couldn’t ignore the pain, but I could pay even more attention to it.

I closed my eyes and looked at the pain. In my mind’s eye it was a blue and black inkspot, morphing from my knee, up through my hip, and back down to my toes. The more I watched it, the less it felt like pain and the more it felt like experiencing pain. It is difficult to articulate the difference, but it’s like there was a beat in between the observation of pain and the feeling of pain. That beat provided just enough relief to get through to the next moment.

My heart rate began to slow and the wails quieted down. I struggled to keep concentration on watching rather than feeling, but when I noticed myself straying, I brought my awareness back to the blue and black inkspot. Eventually, I locked in enough to try another visualization. I thought of a glowing white IV bag filled with painkillers, floating above my body. I watched as the white liquid came toward me in a thin intravenous line, entering my body and flowing through my bloodstream. I watched it take over the inkspot, infiltrating the sludge.

I woke up in blinding pain some time later. I don’t know if two minutes or two hours had passed, but the fact that I had managed to doze off at all seemed like a minor miracle.

A few days later, at my first physical therapy appointment, my PT kept apologizing as he was examining my wounds, changing the dressings, and causing minor amounts of sting as he did his job. I brushed him off, assuring him that I had a new ceiling of pain thanks to my first night after surgery.

I know it was bad—and worse than the IUD—because my body has flooded itself with hormones to make me forget the extent of it. I don’t so much remember the pain as much as I remember the sounds of my cries, the way my dog ran into the closet, and the helplessness of not being able to move. I hope I never have to go through something like that again and yet, I feel an odd sense of camaraderie towards the millions of people throughout history who endured unimaginable physical pain without anesthetics.

And, despite the damage I think much of Big Pharma has done to the world, I know how grateful I was when the right painkillers finally worked their way into my system. The right tool for the right job does wonders. But the wrong tool for the wrong job?

Chaos.