As most of you already know, I’ve been recovering from an injury for a little over a week now. It’s the kind of injury that makes it painful to type, so once again this will be a short post.
When I saw my doctor, I felt just like the character in the XKCD comic above. (You should be able to click on it to enlarge the picture. If that doesn’t work, click here). It’s so difficult to explain what’s going on with your body when you can imagine far more painful and horrifying things that could happen to it. The 10-point pain scale probably works much better for patients who don’t have a runaway imagination. Ha!
What I ended up doing along with my pain scale rating was describing how the injury was affecting me. At one point it was so uncomfortable that I was having a hard time eating or sleeping.
The good news is that I’m doing much better! The pain is 95% gone, although there is still some stiffness that makes it uncomfortable to type for a long period of time. I’ve been doing a set of doctor-recommended exercises to get my full range of motion back.
I hope to be fully back to my old self in time for my next post here. Thank you all for all of your kind thoughts and messages this past week.
I’m glad you are doing better.
I’ve never found pain scales helpful. They are quite subjective. My pain is different from your pain, but we both can agree we are in pain. Pain is quite personal, a ten for you might be a four for someone else. Too many variables…
When I am asked about my pain on a particular day, I usually rate it compared to the best pain day and worst pain day. When I tell Polly….today is a Top Five day, she knows things aren’t good.
Then there’s guilt…I can always think of someone who is worse off than I am, so I tend to minimize my own suffering in light of the pain/suffering of others.
I hope things improve for you. Keep doing those exercises. 🙂
Bruce
Thank you, Bruce!