I hate when doctors ask me to rate my pain. It’s probably my biggest pet peeve when visiting the doctor (right up there with being weighed – who needs that stress?)
How am I supposed to rate my pain? They say it’s on a scale of 1 to 10, but what am I comparing it to? Recently, I had a visit to the local chronic pain clinic and it was the first question they asked; however, this doctor actually had a chronic pain scale sign up describing what they meant. It was the one with the little (not so) smiley faces, and a short little description under each. It was easy to look at it and say “about a 7”, although as I looked at it more I thought, well probably more like an 8.
Rate your pain on a scale of 1- 10. Compared to what? #chronicpain— Julie Ryan (@drunkitty2000) May 19, 2014
Kelly Morgan Dempewolf has a great chapter in her book As My Body Attacks Itself: My journey with autoimmune disease, chronic pain & fatigue
What was once an 8 or 9, becomes a 3 or 4 after you’ve lived with it for a while. If you are looking at a pain scale that asks you to compare your pain to the worst pain imaginable, you’ve experienced a lot of pain, you may or may not be able to imagine that your pain can be much worse. The reference of “burning alive” is used often as the “worst imaginable”.
If you are comparing to the worst pain you’ve ever had, it still changes as you go. The worst pain I’ve experienced would have to be the night I was sitting in bed screaming with a massive migraine, and stomach pain from both ulcers and my gallbladder going out. However, the pain I when my neck/back freaked out so that I couldn’t even move ranks up there pretty high.
Another problem with reporting our pain. Once we do get used to living with it, we can walk around with a smile and no one is the wiser to our pain. This is a problem when a doctor is looking at us, because we aren’t presenting the nonverbal cues that they are told to look for with pain.
Those non-smiley faces are a guide for them. Those are the faces we should be making if we are really in that much pain. We become such good actors to hide those faces from the world, only to discover that we have to remember to stop acting when we are at the doctor, to display our worst possible face. When we’ve spent so much time practicing putting on a smiley face for the world and pretending we aren’t in pain… it can be a bit difficult to flip the switch and display our reality to the doctor, but it is something we must do so that we can better communicate pain.
The pain scale is a chronic pain in my (fill in the blank) #spoonie #fibro Share on X
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Carolin says
can you email me a printable chronic pain scale?
Julie says
I don’t have one but you should be able to google it and find one.
Gracie says
Pain is so subjective! Having lived with certain pains most of my life, I say, “Oh, it’s only a 2 or 3”. But to other people, who don’t live with daily pain, it might be 6, 7 or more. It gets frustrating when pains get so bad you finally make a doctor’s appointment, but the pain has subsided a lot by the time you get there, and then you are trying to describe what WAS. Much easier when describing what IS. And then when you are told, “You have some degree of fibromyalgia, but you are after all, getting older & must expect some aches & pains”. What does that mean? If I described the same pains at age 40, would he have said the same thing?
Julie says
What does it mean? That you have a dismissive ass for a doctor! Given what I’ve heard about that particular doctor yes he probably would have said the same thing if you were my age. It’s amazing how you can get used to pain after living with it for so long, then new pains show up and BAM! they can take you out.