Pain

[ailbhe]

I was directed to this graphic by a comment elsewhere, and I was struck by how useless the 1-10 scale is in general, and by how odd the "Activity tolerance scale" is. When Linnea was a baby I was frequently in too much pain to move, for large parts of many days, and... that was just how life was. We were much more worried by Rob's job being on the rocks. He'd go to work leaving me lying on the floor with the phone in arms reach and the baby on the floor beside me.

That pain was about a 6 or 7 on my personal 1-10 scale.

Nowadays, I am ALWAYS in pain to a level that interferes with tasks. Getting up in the morning, walking any distance, standing for any length of time, using the loo. I have no idea whether pain or lack of sleep is what affects my concentration but something does.

The level of pain I accept as normal is really, really messed up.

Comments

[rmc28]

Ugh, that is a lot of pain :(

[serene]

I am with you. My pain rarely (not never, you poor dear) drops below the "interferes with concentration/tasks" level, and yet, most of the time, I do ignore it, because otherwise, it would be all I thought about.

[ailbhe]

Yes. I've had a little extra pain this week and it's really taking over.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

I always think that sort of graphic/assessing is only useful for sudden, immediate pain that's going to go away when treated.

It's utterly pointless for ongoing levels of pain.

My personal scale is how much codeine I've managed to survive without that day. So it's a good day if I've only had one or two doses of the four allowed per 24 hours.

It's a bad day if I've had four doses.

None of which says anything about how much pain you're still in.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is part of why I'm so glad I asked -- this is a really informative discussion.

Also/more importantly, I am so sorry you're in so much pain. Ow. Ows of sympathy.

[taimatsu]

I don't quite get pain scales either. You've seen the Hyperbole and a Half one, right?

I would guess BOTH pain AND lack of sleep really mess with your concentration a LOT. These things shouldn't be normal if they can be helped, though. I do hope things improve . :(

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

That chart is awesome. Far more useful.

Today, for instance, has been an 8.5. :-)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Casey had a migraine recently and was being a bit unusually helpful for a migraine day. He said that he realize that if he didn't, he'd have no life (he has moderate head pain at least once or twice a week, completely debilitating pain only every few weeks) and that his migraines couldn't be worse than what I do every minute of every day.

And he's right, I had migraine issues for awhile, and the moderate ones aren't worse than this.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The very nice Nurse Practitioner in the Chronic Fatigue Clinic told me that pain scales are only supposed to be used to compare your own pain on different days. They're not supposed to be used to compare your pain to other people's, because that's not something that's easy to do. For example, someone who is totally healthy might break their leg and it's a 10 - worst pain they've ever had - whereas someone who lives with chronic pain might break a leg and barely notice it.