On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your pain? How many of you have been asked this question and have struggled to state a number that you thought was accurate? I have always found it difficult to answer that question. I know the question is well intentioned by a medical person, but I want to ask, “Compared to what?” Through running, sports, and surgeries I have been asked this question more times than I would have wanted.
In a recent conversation with someone who knows about pain, I indicated to her that I preferred productive pain rather than just plain pain. She asked what I meant. Sometimes when people are in serious pain, they have surgery which may be more painful than what brought you to the surgeon, but at least you know that there is a goal at the end of the process that will either reduce or eliminate that initial reason for going to the surgeon in the first place.
Pain is relative. I have found that most people have a different experience with pain. What may seem painful to me may not be painful to the next person. Vicki always warns my doctors that I have a high pain tolerance so don’t count on the accuracy of the number I give them. In my opinion, pain has to be seen in the goal and the context. The importance of the goal is what are you willing to go through to get to what you want in the end, assuming that is relief. Don’t ask a quantitative question such as “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain? Ask is your pain better or worse? Is it worth your goal? The answer to that question is a difficult one to ask in bioethics. Added to that question is one that may be more painful but would give you your goal at the end. That could be life or death. More painful, but at one level an easier choice. You can’t put a number on that one such as on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your pain? The question is irrelevant. Only the outcome matters.
I have been in frequent contact with someone who has been living with the goal of living and not dying. Pain has been this person’s partner and rides along in life with him. Don’t ask this individual “On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your pain level?” This individual’s sights are on one thing with the most painful part of the process for cure ahead of him. The vision is a desire to live another day. That’s all that really matters to him.
Questions and answers are important in life and living with or without pain.
The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, states the issue in such a way that it helps us to live regarding questions and answers when he wrote: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to live the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I believe that when answer and question become one, there you will discover the eternal one. It will be like discovering fire for the first time.
That experience of the eternal is the only question and answer that the person on the other end of my conversations is being guided by. He is a person of great convictions, courage and faith as he begins another journey this week that seeks a cure.
Bioethics is not for the faint of heart for it puts you right next to all that is sacred where numbers matter little but quality of life and a sense of the eternal is always the goal.
Instead of telling someone in pain that you feel their pain, do something different which isn’t asking for a number. There are times when you can ask them what they want you to pray for. They were words of wisdom that I got from someone wise and seasoned as the greatest gift that you can give to someone in pain or with life or death in front of them or just life and the emotional pain that life serves up. it is that person’s need that is expressed and not what you or I feel is needed. It’s good enough to pass along. It’s a question that touches deep into the soul of another. Don’t look for a response to the question “On a scale of 1 to 10…”
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