I AM NOT A NUMBER: I AM A FREE ELEPHANT! ( Rating Your Pain).

 

I am an elephant who always sees lemons as potential lemonade, so I try to use creativity to cope when pain feels intense or overwhelming. Sometimes I draw pain in flashes of acid yellow, or electric blue. At other times it has been circular patterns of orange and deep pink...then there is The Black. Pain can feel like a deserted town, population 1: me.

The truth is that it is hard to visualise pain. If chosing the best visual language is tricky, then trying to describe it to clinicians, or even our loved ones, is a whole new kind of difficult.

When I worked with pre-schoolers. One of the tools that we had to help them manage their emotions was a chart of faces with different expressions. Small child would be able to identify how they felt and point at it- images unlocking their inability to communicate.

At some point someone (who wasn't an absolute genius), thought that this idea could work with chronic pain patients. Patients are routinely asked to rate how much pain they 're experiencing by looking at the image below.

 If only it was as easy as pointing to a smiley: and miraculously we were comprehended. The truth is that you and I may have very different ideas of 'moderate', or 'severe'.The face in 'severe pain' looks like he just ate a sandwich he didn't like, rather than being doubled up with pain, and the smiley on number 10, looks like he needs a sit down and a mug of sugary tea, rather than an ambulance and a morphine drip.

Not surprisingly this scale has come in for substantial ridicule (see below):

Years ago the Pain clinic told me not to draw attention to the pain: I was not to talk about it, or,( heaven forfend!!), to take medication in front of people(!) The intention seemed to be to make me appear 'normal'. The message was clear- I had failed in some ineffable way, and I SHOULD be ashamed.

What would be helpful for everyone, would be to acknowledge that pain ( mental/physical/ spiritual), are inevitably part of our journey through life. We have bodies and minds that can and do break, and there should be only kindness in response: from clinicians, families, and governments.

For many people creating their own Art, music, fiction, or poetry can help express THEIR experience of pain, THEIR way.

We are all so much more than a number on a scale.

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