Re: Pain scale-descriptors

[Guest guest]

MsKaturah wrote: My clothes feel like razors, I feel like I got hit by a mack

truck, I feel like someone is grinding in a knife

Without meds, my pain feels like a serrated egde hunting knife being stabbed

into my neck and someone is twisting it, and the problem is that they never ever

really stop twisting it!

On meds, on my bad days, when I overdo things the pain in my neck, shoulder,

feels like I have rusty barbed wire caught in my neck and whenever I move it

digs in deeper, and I just can't get out of it.

On the good days, it just feels like a piece of a broken glass bottle that is

stuck under the skin, and every move it stabs and jabs.

But at least the glass-like pain is a clean, sharp pain, unlike the other two

that are so jagged, deliberate and debilitating feeling.

Off the meds, that serrated edge knife pain, I can't breathe or even hold

perfectly still without feeling the pain and I could easily pass out from the

pain. I cannot think or function at all, all I can think about is the pain. It

might as well be a persecutor standing there with a knife literally stuck into

my neck because I cannot move. Then, because the pain is relentless, it wears

me out til I just can't take it anymore and I do knock out.

When I wake up, every muscle and hair on my body hurts, probably from being so

tense in response to the pain. When in pain everything in my body tenses. I

clench my teeth so hard that my jaw hurts, and my teeth get loose. I can feel

that pain too when I wake. Like I have been grinding my teeth terribly. I have

to wear a night-guard at all times when I am not fully awake, or I will

dislocate my jaw. I did that once already and now I have permanent TMJ because

of it.

On the meds, I still feel the rusty barbed wire feeling, and it soars high when

I try to do too much, and then I realize that the more I do, and the higher the

pain goes, the lower the usual, day-to-day pain will feel, in comparison to this

soaring, high pain.

So, I tend to overdue things and pay for it dearly over a few days, but feel

better in the long run. These overdo sessions where the pain lowers a bit,

lasts 5-7 days (if I am lucky), but it costs me 2-3 days in dire pain following

the overdo session, to be able to get that 5-7 day relief and release. It's all

relative. The pain never really goes 'down', it just feels like it because I

raise it so much.

The 5-7 day relief and release is the glass shard in the neck, pain. That's

what I call my 1-4 pain rating.

I think if the average, no-pain, not used to pain, person had my 'glass shard in

the neck pain,' I think they'd be in the emergency room in excruciating pain.

But, since that's so far less than what my usual pain is, I tend to rate it low

on the pain scale.

Even with the barbed wire pain, I still go to work, and do whatever I must do to

keep afloat. I don't have any family to help out, and I don't have any friends

who are willing to be bothered, so not much choice but to not-grin, and bear it.

It is what it is. And, contrary to the popular belief that pain patients are

drug seekers, Wrong! I, as a pain patient would be the first to proclaim that I

was pain free and hop off all medication should the pain stop! What I want is

to be pain free, and drug free.

Jade