Pain is highly personal and it can be difficult to communicate. However, in clinical settings and in areas of the law that provide compensation for pain and suffering, being able to describe your pain can be significant. Medically, it can determine your course of treatment. In a legal case, it can determine how adequately you are compensated for the injuries you have suffered.
How can one best communicate something that is inherently difficult to communicate?
In a clinical setting, pain scales might be used: either a pain scale with illustrations of facial expressions representing degrees of pain or a numeric rating scale. In a numeric rating scale of 1 to 10, each number corresponds to a level of pain. The numeric scale is helpful for assessing certain kinds of pain. It can convey the intensity of pain and it can give a sense of how pain is progressing. However, a numerical scale might not be helpful for describing a form of pain like dizziness, and even the numerical pain scale is ultimately subjective. Usually the rating of 10 signifies the worst pain you’ve ever felt.
There are other qualitative ways of describing how pain makes you feel. These can more fully convey the experience of it to others. There are many descriptive words to describe how pain feels. A pain can be a burning pain, a stabbing, a throbbing, a sharp or shooting pain. It can also be helpful to give an idea of how the pain is impacting your quality of life. It is important to consider the impact of pain on bodily function, for example. Pain might be so bad that it renders you unable to sleep at night or pain can wake you up at night. Pain might be the kind of pain that makes it difficult to stand for a long time. It might affect your family life or social life by limiting your ability to participate in activities. Pain can make daily life more difficult. Showering and dressing might take twice as long as usual. Pain can also cause depression or fatigue and make living less enjoyable overall.
These kinds of descriptions make it easier for others to understand the intensity and the quality of a person’s pain. A comprehensive picture of pain is the first step towards getting the help that the pain demands.