The Pain Scale

Sadly for most of us, the older we get, the more aches and pains become part of our daily existence. Lately I seem to have done some minor damage to a body part, and while healing I gave some thought to the "Pain Scale". Anyone who has been to a doctor for anything pain related has heard of it, or seen the chart. "On a scale of one to ten, how badly does it hurt?" is the way it goes. Supposedly this gives your health care provider an idea of how serious the pain is. But how effective is this?

First of all, how do we define the one and the ten? How do we quantify it? Is a sunburn worse than a stubbed toe? Is it a stabbing pain or a dull pain? Can they be compared? Personally, I have never been shot or stabbed, nor have I been severely burned, or given birth. I would imagine that those things would be up there on the ten side of the scale, but never having experienced them, how can I compare my toothache, or broken toe or pulled muscle to a gunshot wound?

Of course, even with similar injuries, people's perception of the pain associated with them are different. A boxer or martial artist, used to a certain degree of low-level injury, might become so used to pain that he ignores it, while the same injury might cause someone else to scream in agony. Some providers have linked descriptions to some of the numbers, I would find this to be pretty helpful since it puts quantifiable labels to the numbers.







Of course, there are still different types of pain. A heavy throbbing pressure can be as debilitating as feeling like a sharp object is being inserted into your eyeballs.




While writing this blog post I came across a new scale that might take off: