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A History of Hurt
The long human relationship with pain
Perhaps you’ve had this experience: You see the doctor about something that’s causing you pain. The doctor asks you how bad your pain is, on a scale from one to ten. You have no idea how to answer that question, but you don’t want to disappoint the man, so you give him a number.
I struggled with back and hip problems for a long time, and I dreaded that question every time I went to seek treatment. My pain was a slippery thing; sometimes it seemed unbearable, while at other times I forgot about it entirely. Often, it wasn’t pain, really, but an intense feeling of discomfort or wrongness. I’d experience a worsening of pain for a little while, make an appointment, and then, by the time I got to the doctor, the pain would have changed or even disappeared. Trying to describe it after the fact was kind of like trying to imagine August weather in the depths of winter — I understood it theoretically but had lost my handle on what it was really like.
So the doctor would ask me to rate my pain, one to ten, ten being “unbearable” agony, and a confused string of thoughts would run through my head. Well, right now, it’s not so bad, or is it? Is this worse than yesterday? Is it worse right now because I am sitting? Has pain moved, or is that where it’s always been? It’s bearable, because, well, I’m bearing it…
