On pain...

Every so often I write a blog entry on pain or at least I think about doing so. I guess it's not surprising, since pain is a part of my life, not a pleasant part, not a good part ^*1, just a part and it's a part that I just have to get on with. Ironically, it's the 'just getting on with it' that makes it difficult for others to really see or appreciate. My normal response to "How are you?" is (as cheerily as I can manage) is "I'm fine!" Probably not the most helpful answer for hubby who is trying to judge how up for anything I am, but it's really the only answer I know how to give. I see the alternative as providing the listener with a list of my woes, which bits hurt worse today over what and just how many drugs have you taken today?!

That's one of the things that people don't see - the drugs...those wonderful little pills that keep me going day after day after day. There are the orange ones that keep the nerve pain^*2 in my leg under control and then there's the codeine based stuff without which I don't know what I would do to manage. On top of that there's all the other stuff, the heat packs, the special comfy chair and, of course, the regular physiotherapy and treatment. People don't see this behind the veneer of 'I'm fine!', but nor do I really want them to. I want them to see me as a strong capable and independent person and I don't want the almost inevitable sympathy that comes with 'Oh, it really hurts...'

Anyway, I am sure you are all wondering why I decided to write this today if I've been 'meaning to do it for ages'. Well, as in all things, something triggers you to do so and in my case it was a conversation with someone recently who was telling me what a high pain threshold they had, but a recent condition had left them in agony. They had never had a painful condition before and I couldn't understand how they could determine their level of 'pain threshold' without having a standard of comparison. I also felt that they were trying to compare our levels of pain, like schoolchildren saying that 'my dad's bigger than yours!'...'my pain's worse than yours'...By contrast, I was talking to MIB who I know struggles silently in much the way I do - both of us straying away from 'Fine' occasionally to say 'I'm just a bit sore today', or 'little bit achy, you know...'

There ought to be a universal scale of pain, didn't there, like the Beaufort Scale for wind. The only problem there is that the Beaufort Scale was designed to be used without any instrument recordings, so I guess it's all a matter of opinion then...which is all that pain is. It's a strange thing really - I can't tell you if I hurt more than you, because I can only feel my pain, I can't feel yours and, funnily enough, you can't feel mine^*3! The idea that there is a 'threshold' at all, seems an odd thing to say in circumstances where there is no way of directly comparing anything. Anyway, as I said before, it's all very strange, but I do think something needs to be done. I remember when I was in hospital, the nurses kept coming round and asking me how my pain was on a scale of 1 to 3 - with 1 being no pain, and 3 being agony - I kept saying things like, "Um, 2 and a quarter?", which was really not much help to them. I just don't think 3 levels is enough somehow