I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR PAIN

Did a search on google chrome for the meaning of the word “PAIN”.    It had two meanings.  One that meant a noun, where one either senses pain or took pains, while another a verb, where someone either caused or suffered pain due to the act of others.

Whatever be the context, pain always causes hurt to the person who suffers it.  Pain is only sensed by the person who has it. 

I and probably many of us have heard people say to patients (of course with full of empathy), “We understand your pain! Or we understand what you are going through!”  But do they really understand.  Of course not.

Is pain defined?

IASP (the international association for study of pain) itself had to change its definition recently because it felt the earlier one was not enough to explain it.

    We as PAIN PHYSICIANS do get many patients who come to us with different sought of pains.  Describing the pain and intensity of pain is a difficult task for them and to us.  So, we often do ask them whether the pain is throbbing, numbing, dragging, pulling and what not just to try to understand exactly how they perceive their pain.  Hopefully they answer ‘yes’ to one of those long lists of questions and then we draw some inference from it.😔

I don’t know where is your pain and how much it is.

Ah! Now don’t ask me how do I gauge(measure) their pain intensity.  Its really silly and I don’t really want to say it.  There is really no difference between me and a customer care guy asking for a rating.😁😁😁

Next comes the arduous task of asking them where their pain is?  Well, you may think that’s quite straight forward.  Of course, many at times it is.  But 10 out of my 100 patients will have rather diffuse answer for it.  Some come with pain written all over the body with only few spots left to pick with no pain.

“Lines get blurred when the perspective is lost.”   People in pain lose control of their lives, loose track how a normal live is or was and lose touch of reality.

One patient exclaimed in angst to me in her suffering

“Doctor, I no longer realise whether I am in Pain or Pain is me.  It has taken over me.”    PAIN IS ME.😓

This biblical passage in the New Testament tells us that even people before us considered having pain to be equal to being possessed.   Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel patients in pain are demonised.  I say people in pain feel pain has taken over their lives or possessed them.  My patients are testimony to this fact.

So do we really understand pain.  Food for thought.

But next time you meet a patient in either emotional of physical pain, don’t say

“I understand your pain”

Better say

“I understand you are under tremendous and unbearable pain.”

“Pain which neither I or anyone else will ever be able to fathom.”

Why do we suffer pain? To find an answer read this blog...

Dr. MILON V. MITRAGOTRI