Pain is an unwelcomed visitor in life. It's that cold, calculating part of reality that doesn't care about your plans or the things you love. It can strip you down and take everything from you. In the extreme, living becomes nothing more than surviving the day or making it through the next hour. It can leave you wondering why it’s happening. But often there isn't any clear answer, which makes the sting of emotional and physical pain linger.

Kris Smiley is a veteran of chronic pain. He first had cancer at the age of two and endured three more cancer episodes later on. You’d think that would be enough for anyone to have to dealt with. But then there were the multiple highly invasive surgeries to fix the fallout from all the treatments that saved him. Yet he’s still not out of the woods. Back pain, arthritis, and kidney stones are frequent companions.

In this podcast episode, Kris takes us through the land of pain. It’s his story about learning to hold hands with what was tearing him apart. There’s no attempt here to minimize anyone else’s pain or to make a universal claim about what pain means. We all carry our own wounds. Stories can only help name a place you might be now or may have been to before.

Trigger warning: The episode does contain adult language and graphic depictions of medical procedures. It helps to viscerally get at what Kris feels and has experienced. At least that’s the hope. And that it leads to an emotional connection between him and you, the listener.

Intro | A Montage of Pain (0:00)
Act 1 | A Guy Named Kris (5:45)
Act 2 | I Get Off at This Stop (20:09)
Act 3 | An Exit (34:10)
Credits (55:06)

Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Rhucle.