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4:24pm June 18, 2014

twocentsormore:

So I’ve decided it’s okay for me to say I live with chronic pain, regardless of whether it’s “not as bad” as some of my friends’ chronic pain.  Because when you decide you had a pain-free day because you had minimal muscle and joint pain, but then later remember on that same day you couldn’t wear pants because they caused neuropathic pain in your legs, and were having some TMI pelvic pain like usual (not severe but I get it from doing things most people take for granted will never be painful), you realise your brain is somehow categorising the last two types of pain as being “not really pain.”  Because you’re so used to living with them.

And when I describe stuff like being very restricted in the kinds of pants I can wear because of neuropathic pain, people are like “that’s horrible” and I go “huh?” Because it’s been going on for so long, even if it’s “not as bad” as some other people’s, that it’s hard for me to even think of it as pain at all.  I just keep thinking of it as being something like… I don’t know, having a heater that turns on when you don’t want it to.

I have a feeling even your idea that it’s “not as bad” might be an illusion.

Regarding neuropathic pain, it’s very common for people with neuropathic or central pain to not categorize it as pain, and therefore not report it to doctors, because the experience is so different than the experience of typical pain.  People are far more likely to report loss of function, than pain, in that circumstance.

And I am willing to bet you have every bit as much chronic pain as most people you’re thinking of do.  Just because I know that people tend to underestimate their own pain and overestimate that of others, especially when they have a tendency to see others’ as “more real”.