Pain

There are some words in life that I think encompass too broad a spectrum to be meaningful.  Cold... are we talking 40 degrees or -15 degrees.  It makes a difference.  Love... there are so many different variations and levels and intensities of love that sometimes I think having one word doesn't do all the people we love in different ways justice.  PAIN.  Pain is not a word I thought a whole lot about before I developed endometriosis symptoms.  I'd wager a lot of money that I had a different perception of menstrual cramps/pain than a lot of women, but we don't have any way to convey that accurately.  It is also completely subjective so what is painful to one person may not be to another.  When I first developed symptoms, the best way for me to describe my pain was to say that it felt like I was having menstrual cramps and pain associated with my period that just never went away.  But I realized that that was not enough to explain how badly I was feeling because most people probably don't experience excruciating pain one day a month.




I have found myself re-evaluating levels of pain often with this disease.  I would think, "Okay, this level of pain must be the worst" and then something else would happen and I would have a pain level higher than the previous one.  For me, I'd rank a kidney stone as most painful.  Then probably waking up after surgery before you get the really good pain killers.  Then the pain I had at the beginning of my endometriosis symptoms.  So now I've ranked them... but I don't really know how much that helps you understand my pain or allows me to accurately describe how I'm feeling to someone.  Everything I describe is based upon my own experiences with pain, with no way to even compare similar pains in other people.  For instance, even if I have a sprained ankle and my friend has a sprained ankle, there's no way to tell who is in more "pain" or objectively who is experiencing more discomfort.  Or two people could be experiencing the same type of pain and describe it two completely different ways.  Our vocabulary for pain just does not allow us to really empathize beyond that which we, ourselves, have experienced.

(THIS)

is much less helpful than 

(THIS)

Context Matters!

I think all the internal pain I've experienced has felt worse than acute physical pain, such as a sprain, a broken bone, or a pulled muscle.  In those cases, you can identify the cause of the pain, you can be proactive in addressing the pain (staying off your sprained ankle or wrapping up a muscle, etc.) but with internal pain, it is just so hard to identify from which exact point the pain is emanating... Did the pain start in the front and wrap around to the back or vice versa?  

My point with all of this is that I think diseases, such as endometriosis, that can involve prolonged or chronic pain can be incredibly deceptive when it comes to what other people can see versus how I, or anyone, is actually feeling.  I have a tendency to shut down verbally if I'm in a lot of pain.  That doesn't mean I'm feeling okay, that's just how I am.  Other people might exclaim or curse or scream.  All okay.  But just because you can't see or hear my pain doesn't make it any less real to me or anyone else in my position.  I wish there were better descriptors so that when I say "I'm hurting" it could convey a specific meaning or level but instead it's all pretty vague.  I can say I'm hurting when I have a papercut or when I'm experiencing severe internal pain.  

Pain is something that hobbles people, makes them disabled, effects all aspects of a person's life and yet we really are not well-equipped to discuss it or understand it.  Now I might call something "uncomfortable" that a year ago I might have said "hurts" simply because my experience has changed.  So when dealing with me, or anyone, with a chronic pain problem, please be sensitive.  Just because your pain may not bother you very much, does not mean that my pain should not bother me.  And I have to remind myself that just because I feel like crap a lot of days does not mean that if someone else is sick or injured it is any less important to them and should still be important to me.  Compassion for everyone is perhaps the rule then when trying to understand another person's pain level.  I would say, assume they are being truthful and then try to incorporate their descriptions into your own life experiences.  Understanding an illness is hard enough already; when the symptoms are hidden from the public, a little more understanding may be needed.