What A Pain!

Here’s a fun topic to think about. Pain. Yep, that’s what I said, Pain. OK, I’m sure it’s not the most popular thing to think about, but here I go, thinking about it. Having experienced pain in my life, and having close friends and family who have experienced pain, I sometimes wonder if the sensations that I feel are the same that other people feel. Like, does your pain feel like mine? Can you feel my pain? Stick with me here, and maybe this will make a little sense.

There is a tendency for some people I know to always think the worst, when it comes to self-diagnosing a newly discovered pain or physical symptom. I can definitely get on that train of thought, as well, but I usually don’t. I’m more often in the category of well, hold on a minute, here, let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, or jump to conclusions. The pain in your abdomen doesn’t necessarily mean you have bladder cancer.

When trying to figure out what is causing pain, it is important to describe what kind of pain it is. I have never been good at verbalizing the type of pain that I feel, because, it just HURTS. But, I’ve learned, over the years, there are key phrase descriptions that help narrow down the cause, and I have incorporated them into my vocabulary. Is it a stabbing pain? No. Is it a dull pain? No. Is it a sharp pain? No. Is it intermittent? No. Does it move around? No. Is it throbbing? YES! THAT’S IT!! THROBBING PAIN!

That reminds me of another story, which is slightly off-topic, but let’s explore it for a minute.

A few years ago, I developed a medical condition that, for our purposes here, could be categorized as vertigo. It wasn’t vertigo per se, but, in the same wheelhouse, so we’ll leave it at that. I didn’t suffer any pain, so it’s not completely relevant to this discussion, but, bear with me, I’m gonna bring it back around in a minute. I endured multiple doctors performing multiple tests, ruling out a large number of worst-case scenarios. After 4 months of light-headedness, dizziness, lose of balance, vision disturbances, and other lifestyle altering symptoms, I was finally sent to a Vestbular Disorder Clinic. I remember sitting in the waiting room, filling out the screening questions on the New Patient form, when I started reading the section titled ‘Have You Ever Felt’. There in black and white were a list of symptoms that were worded in everyday language. I almost started crying as I read each question and answered “YES! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN FEELING LIKE! THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME!” I had not been able to verbalize some of the symptoms, but, here they were, explained perfectly. They felt my pain.

That’s how I think about pain—you can’t always describe it in a way that other people understand. Some people suffer from chronic pain, which, unfortunately, resets the pain threshold. People are constantly deciding how much pain to put up with. I suffered a toothache for over 15 years, because I continued to say it wasn’t too bad, money was better spent on other important things, and if I chewed on the other side of my mouth, it didn’t really hurt too much. As a kid, when one of my daughters was pressed to describe what kind of pain she felt in her stomach, she said it felt like a snowman inside her punching her stomach.  She’s the redhead, and word on the street is that redheads feel pain differently than others. I can’t verify if that’s true or not. But, I’ve never had a snowman punching my stomach, so I don’t have much experience with that. It’s hard to consider how people react to pain in their lives, when you can’t really feel their level of discomfort.

One year, in rehabilitative therapy, I learned a new dimension of pain. I secretly nicknamed my physical therapist Atilla the Hun, as she insisted on aggressive therapy, forcing my healing wrist to do things that it was not meant to do. It all worked out, in the long run, but not without whimpers and curse words and a lot of pain. 

When my kids were young, I tried to understand the extent of their bumps and bruises by using a scale of discomfort. How much does it hurt, on a scale of 1 to 10? Anything below a 6, we’d keep an eye on it for a few days; above a 6, we’d probably want to get someone to look at it. Seeing as it was me, I complicated things when I flipped the scale around from time to time, and asked instead How do you feel on a scale of 1 to 10?, with an answer of 1 meaning call the ambulance, and an answer of 10 meaning you were ready to do a jig in a field of flowers.   The kids cried, “No, not the scale!!”, but it was the only method I had of distinguishing real pain from the regular ouches of living. As, I exasperatedly told ‘em one day, “Look, nobody feels good. Everybody has pains and discomforts, and some of them, you just learn to live with.”

Is that right? Do we just need to learn to live with pain? I think we all carry around a certain amount of pain, whether it is physical, mental, or emotional. And, I think we all come to accept the fact that we are constantly setting a new threshold for the best we are going to feel, physically and mentally. I think that’s what happens over and over again in life, especially as we age. This is especially true of our elderly pets. The vet says that they suffer with arthritic pain and other pains. Medication helps, but doesn’t relieve all of the discomfort. But, dogs and cats don’t think about aches and pains. They modify their behavior to accommodate the pain, but they don’t consciously think “Drat, I wish I wasn’t getting old.” Instead, they accept the new normal of what they can do comfortably. If they can’t jump on the chair or walk down the stairs, they can’t tell us that it hurts, so they dutifully carry on doing things that don’t hurt.  They accept the new normal and don’t act as if they are concerned or sad or depressed about it.

So, why am I talking about pain? I’m thinking mostly about loved ones who are experiencing pain. I can’t really share their pain. I don’t really know what they feel, how bad it is, how unrelenting and overshadowing it is. I think that the best reaction I can have to other people’s pain is relating to them with sympathy and empathy. 

Sympathy implies sharing (or having the capacity to share) the feelings of another, while 

Empathy tends to be used to mean imagining, or having the capacity to imagine, feelings that one does not actually have.

Merriam-Webster

Without getting stuck in semantics, I think that our noblest reaction to other people’s struggles with pain, is to offer sympathy to their plight, and empathy to visualize how they can be helped. How we deal with our own pain is how we deal with our own pain. But, how we deal with others who are in pain says a lot about our humanity. Learning how to help others articulate what is wrong, then providing sympathy to help them feel less alone, and empathy to help them heal, should be our standard reaction. We should care when other people are in pain, whether the pain is physical, mental or emotional. Because, one day, my friend, the pain may strike us, too. And where will that leave us? Will anyone feel our pain?

May we all live long and prosper.