Thoughts on pain

Grizzly · Apr 8, 2011

Saw this today and it got me to thinking.
 
<a class="H-lightbox-open" href="http://www.kickrunners.com/content/type/61/id/82090/width/1000/height/800/flags/" target="_blank"><img alt="pain_rating.png" class="lightbox-enabled" data-id="16642" data-type="61" src="http://www.kickrunners.com/content/type/61/id/16642/width/740/height/217" style="; width: 740px; height: 217px"></a>
 
 
Last year I was on an 8 out of 10, but yes, according to this it was maybe a 1, and when I think about the pain that friends have gone through with cancer over the last year I have nothing to complain about.
 
But on the physio table today for my weekly torture session, and I don't use that term lightly, I got to thinking about how (and I don't know any other way of putting this) intimate pain can be. No, I'm not going all S&M on you here, my motto isn't "No Pain, No Gain", it's "No Pain, No Pain".
 
But I can see how for some people pain is what can ground them to this existence, provide proof of their tangible reality. Maybe thats what the attraction is to boxing and the more violent sports.
 
When all you can focus on is pain your life is made far simpler and your concerns are reduced to a singular focus. It's that focus that is lacking in most lives and I think it can be for some people an intoxicant - much like "falling in love" provides a simiilar all-consuming focus.
 
I've gone to this weird space in describing my pain. The absence of pain is not being pain-free for me at the moment, it's like there's a void where the pain used to be, a receptacle there that can be filled up again with pain, a potential for it to be held again. Something like that Spinal Tap dial that can go to 11, it's down really low but somehow I know that it can be cranked up again.
 
Oh well, time get a tea and get to work.

jebba · Apr 8, 2011

You know, my bizarre but loveable church had a sermon on pain a few years ago. How it's impossible for an outsider to measure. And it's difficult for someone in pain to engage with their world.
 
When people advocate unmedicated childbirth, I think alot of what people try to do is get their mind ready to tolerate pain. But I don't think the level of pain is the same for each person or even each birth. I had an epidural with #1 and no meds with #2. The pain I was in before the epidural was waaaaay worse with #1 than the entire unmedicated birth with #2 was. But my number 10 on the pain scale is actually a tie between childbirth #1 and when I had a wart burned off the bottom of my foot by a podiatrist in Damascus.
 
 
<div class="quote-container">Quote:
<div class="quote-block">
<div> When all you can focus on is pain your life is made far simpler and your concerns are reduced to a singular focus. It's that focus that is lacking in most lives and I think it can be for some people an intoxicant - much like "falling in love" provides a simiilar all-consuming focus.</div>
</div>
</div>
 
Similar, in some ways, to depression. When getting out of bed and taking a shower is all that can be accomplished, suddenly other things lose their tangibility. In some ways, it is liberating. At least, when you come out of the experience, you find satisfaction with just being "okay."

Grizzly · Apr 8, 2011

Thanks Jebba,
 
Interesting thoughts. I think that they point to our essential alone-ness as human beings. Much as we can't know the depths of pain that someone experiences, we can't say that we know the heights of love or joy either. And yet we value those moments, perhaps illusory, where be believe that we cross the barriers between us and share our humanity.
 
"Compassion", to suffer with, we prize as a virtue. I don't think that I am alone when I say that I would gladly take on the pain of my wife or children if it meant that they would be spared. And yet when my wife mentioned the same to me when I was in the depths of it last fall I was horrified at the thought of her having to undergo even a fractio of it.
 
I was also thinking about how strange our vocabulary becomes when we face the extremes of pain. It becomes almost religious: "exquisite", "transcendent", I know that there will likely be worse physical pain that I will go through in my life, but I don't know that we have the words to describe it. Then again, maybe we don't have the words to describe any extreme of the human experience.

airehead · Apr 8, 2011

My elderly mother has been in pain for a large chunk of her adult life. Sweetest woman ever, most unfair situation.
 
She's had a doc who swears she's addicted to pain meds at 75 and wants to cut her off. (imo, 75? in pain? go ahead and be addicted, enjoy what you have left.)
 
She moved to Dallas and a new doc, very young--showed amazing empathy, compassion and insight. He is treating her pain and working with her meds. He doesn't treat her like an addict or fake or a seeker.
 
I agree that we can never gauge another's pain, so I am always so amazed when someone is able to seemingly "understand."

fox-runr · Apr 9, 2011

pain is so individual, but I have to think that a person that can tolerate some types of pain well....doesn't mean they can tolerate all types of pain well. I've not used pain killers after some major surgeries, save the pills for menstrual cramps. I've passed kidneys stones while trying to finish up a workout and another time I had to drug myself silly on Advil PM. I've had pain so bad that I was praying to die and my doctor said " it shouldn't hurt that bad"<img alt="mad.gif" class="bbcode_smiley" src="http://files.kickrunners.com/smilies/mad.gif">

RaisingArizonainNH · Apr 9, 2011

Acute pain as in trauma is dealt with by the brain differently than chronic pain. I liken the pain of child birth to the same level of pain cause by trauma. The brain experiences the pain but after trauma many people just can't remember it . The brain knows it wasbad but it just cannot allow you to remember it the way it really was. Childbirth definitely falls into that for me anyway- It hurt then really .. but afterward somehow it wasn't so bad... of course it helps that you get this cool little baby out of the deal too !
 
 Chronic pain is so on going and your brain KNOWS it is there, expects it and even gets used to it. My knees .. yeah well this week wasn't good. I can;t take ibuprofen any more - it aggravates my asthma and makes me hoarse all the time.. but now I can't walk well at all. I have a pulled muscle in my butt.. piriformis I think - probably from favoring the really bad right knee...It wakes me up several times a night - can't sleep on it can't sleep on the other side - as that causes pain.. 
 
 
Chronic pain sucks .

4boysmom · Apr 9, 2011

About 10yrs ago I had severe abdominal pain. I saw every specialist, had every test imaginable yet no one could figure out what was wrong with me. One doctor even suggested I see a shrink because some pain isn't really pain. I had exploratory surgery and they found... nothing. BUT, finally I got pain meds and could actually function. Well, sorta function as my day revolved around the pain med schedule. It was every 6hrs, and God forbid if I skipped a dose, otherwise it would take 2 more doses to get hte pain back under control. I got major stoned for about an hour, then was okay. So, driving revolved around that. Really, though, that's no way to live. On one recheck, I told the doctor you know, every time you mess with my ovary, my pain level goes from 5 to 100 (on a scale of 1-10). Maybe there's something wrong? And seeing my aunt just died of ovarian cancer, maybe we should see aobut removing my ovary? When I woke from surgery, they asked my pain level. Uh, 0. You mean no pain at all? Yes, no pain. Yah, I was a little sore from surgery but the cause of the pain was gone.
 
Before surgery, I would take the dog for a "walk", often making it up 2 or 3 houses and wondering how the hell I was going to make it back home. Surgery was in December. In January, I started doing long distance walking. In February I started running. In April I ran my first half marathon.

Grizzly · Apr 9, 2011

Was there something wrong with the ovary?

4boysmom · Apr 10, 2011

Yes. Adhesions. So every time it tried to move, the adhesions tugged. Hurt like hell!!!
<div class="quote-container">Quote:
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by Grizzly <a href="/forum/thread/73377/thoughts-on-pain#post_1993460"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a> Was there something wrong with the ovary?
</div>
</div>

jebba · Apr 10, 2011

Goodness, 4boys!
 
This is off topic, but here's a fascinating New Yorker article about neurological sources of itching:
 
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande" target="_blank">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande</a>

GaReb770 · Apr 10, 2011

I don't have any real pains, but I fell and jammed my elbow pretty good a few months ago. Although it's 90% better I still struggle with it a little. For example when doing pushups, I have to do what we call "girls" pushups because my arm just doesn't withstand the full force of my body for more than maybe two male pushups. I can row pretty well with it and I'm doing various barbell exercises with it but I can tell it's still not quite right. Maybe another couple of months and it'll be normal again. I wonder at times if part of it is psychological.

Thoughts on pain

Top Contributors this Month