To Make Dana & Ruth Laugh

[trystinn]

My kind of pain chart:





0: Hi. I am not experiencing any pain at all. I don't know why I'm even here.

1: I am completely unsure whether I am experiencing pain or itching or maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth.

2: I probably just need a Band Aid.

3: This is distressing. I don't want this to be happening to me at all.

4: My pain is not fucking around.

5: Why is this happening to me??

6: Ow. Okay, my pain is super legit now.

7: I see Jesus coming for me and I'm scared.

8: I am experiencing a disturbing amount of pain. I might actually be dying. Please help.

9: I am almost definitely dying.

10: I am actively being mauled by a bear.

11: Blood is going to explode out of my face at any moment.

Too Serious For Numbers: You probably have ebola. It appears that you may also be suffering from Stigmata and/or pinkeye.

Comments

[dana3.livejournal.com]

I ran a copy of this for our Practice Committee to consider revising the pain scale ... ;D

Alternatively, the doc told a story of a surgeon he knew who -- when following up with post-op pain -- might be greeted with a pain number of 12 or 15 on a 10-scale. His response? "Oh, then that means that I *owe* you some pain! Let's go out to the parking lot and work on that." One or two of those and they figured out that 10 really IS as high as it goes ...

[vicki-sine.livejournal.com]

My problem is I do not experience pain the way most people do.

I tend to automatically drop into meditative state when pain begins.

So if I am speaking softly, my face is in a relaxed mode and smiling and my shoulders have dropped. I have either just come out of a self induced trance state...or I am at 9 or 10 on the pain scale.

I don't scream, I don't groan, I don't cry. I really don't feel it as pain in the same sense, I am just aware, that some part of my body ain't right, I can probably tell you precisely where it ain't right.

But if I am not bleeding, most triage folks just look at me in confusion.

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

I can relate with you about unusual pain responses.

For me, pain makes me tired and anxious. And I can handle a lot of pain, which is good because narcotics don't work very well on me.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

I think many of us can. I generally ask for some means to calibrate their pain scale to my understanding so that I can adequately answer the question.

For example, where does bone-on-bone grinding/disintegration fall on it.
Having one's leg crushed between to vehicles, one stationary and the other in reverse.
Being hit int he face hard enough to dislodge a tooth...

Then I tell them my ratings for those three things: 7, 8, 3

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

I tend to say things like "worse than a migraine", "less than a tooth ache" or "on par with twisting my ankle". Worst case scenario would be "uterine biopsy", i.e. pain that makes me shake and throw up immediately.

Without those sort of reference points, we're just not communicating.