Description of Chronic Pain

The following post is a quote from "Anonymous" on the following Blog post:

http://askanmd.blogspot.com/2009/10/never-say-10-how-doctors-interpret.html

The article was about the pain rating scale used by doctors. Whoever Anonymous is wrote, I thought, brilliantly on the subject of chronic pain. In my opinion, perhaps the worst thing about chronic pain, beyond the pain itself, is the inability to know the timeframe and/or purpose of the pain. Labor, though horrible pain, has the purpose of bringing forth your new child. No matter how painful it is, you know that it will end with the presence of your baby, that you will recover, and life will go forth. With this pain, there is no timeframe. No one can tell me when it will end, how it will end, what good will come from this suffering. My mind can go to horrific places when I start down the path of thinking that every single day of the rest of my life will be like yesterday, when I broke down crying in Walmart because the pain was so bad that I didn't know how I would make it from the pharmacy out to my car. I look healthy and fit, so no one can tell by looking at me that my body and spirit are in tremendous pain and that some days just are not fit for living.

At any rate, I leave you with Anonymous' comment, because whoever he or she is, the description of chronic pain is incredibly accurate and well-written. And their description of its effect on his/her children is dead on:

"And it doesn't just affect the person with the pain. My kids are 6 & 8 and my daughter has never known me when I wasn’t in pain, and my son was too young to remember it.

My pain affects their life every day, and I hate that. I find it so hard to live with that knowledge."

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"Anonymous said...

I wonder if one of the biggest challenges with classifying pain is the fact that there are 2 types, transitory & chronic. Transitory pain can be excruciatingly awful, such as a broken bone, or a migraine, or childbirth... but it goes away. A few days of medication, and there is a resolution. It is clear that it can be "fixed" by drugs, breathing techniques, meditation or distraction techniques.

Chronic pain is a trickier beast. If you have a rock in your shoe, it is not a pain worth metioning. It is a 1 maybe a 2. The assumption is that the rock can be shaken loose, that the foot will soon be comfortable again, since it is a small pain. It isn’t much, really, just a little thing. An aggravation in your shoe.

But it isn't a little thing at all.

At first, it is an annoyance, really. An aggravation, if you tend towards anger. But after a while, the pain dominates your thinking. All you can think about is how long until I can take the pebble out of my shoe.

You start trying to walk differently, trying to avoid the thing that causes pain, but then other parts of you start to ache because you aren’t using your body the way it is supposed to be used. So you go back to walking normally, pretending the pain doesn’t exist. You walk slower. When that doesn’t work, you walk faster.

You buy better shoes. You buy a cane. You take Tylenol, and Advil, but the pebble is still there.

You try hopping. You try crawling. Still a pebble.

Mind over matter, you tell yourself. Meditation. Breathing. Hypnosis. And a pebble, still in your shoe.

“You don’t have acute pain, you don’t need strong drugs,” the doctor tells you, and you can see him thinking don’t you know there are people who are in serious pain out there? Stop whining.

“What’s the matter with you?” your boss asks, “Your mistakes are costing me money!” and you want to scream can’t you see the pebble? I can barely think past the constant background noise of the pebble! How am I supposed to work as well as I used to?

But of course no one else can see the pebble. Most don’t even believe it is there, not all the time. It couldn’t possibly be. Pain is a transient thing, after all. No one could REALLY be in pain ALL the time.

Those who do believe don’t understand why you don’t just take a Tylenol and make it go away, like they do with a headache. Pain is conquerable, after all. We have the technology, they say.

Because the alternative is too scary to contemplate: What if the pain never goes away? What if I’ll always have a pebble?

Chronic pain doesn't have to be a strong pain to have a strong effect on your quality of life. Even a chronic pain of 2 or 3 should be taken as seriously as a chronic pain of 7 or 8, because your life changes in so many ways.

And it doesn't just affect the person with the pain. My kids are 6 & 8 and my daughter has never known me when I wasn’t in pain, and my son was too young to remember it.

My pain affects their life every day, and I hate that. I find it so hard to live with that knowledge.

It doesn't have to be a 10 on the pain scale to be a 10 on the "negatively affects quality of life" scale. If a doctor can give me back my quality of life by medicating my pain, even if my pain isn't a 5 or higher, then why on earth would they choose to not medicate it? Why would one force my kids to make sacrifices in the richness of their life experiences just because one thinks my pain isn't strong enough to warrant treating with anything more than over the counter meds? If OTC meds were working for me, I wouldn't be in the doctor's office saying I'm in pain and please help me do something about it. I'd be out there doing fun stuff with my kids and enjoying my life to the fullest. Yet, being young, and female, and diagnosed with fibromyalgia among other things, I find it next to impossible to get adequate pain control, and our lives are the poorer for it."