What is chronic pain and why is the definition changing?

I am in pain every day, every hour, every minute, and every second. I haven’t had a pain free moment in 9 years. The current prevailing literature says that’s because I’m just being emotional about my illness, or that I’m not meditating enough, or that I just want to be in pain. But despite what the naysayers say, being in pain non stop for such a long period of time is indescribable. And of course being in pain has changed my life. In some ways it’s changed it for the better, it’s made me a more thoughtful person after all. It’s helped me to understand the pain of others, even though it may be different than mine because those of us with pain need to stick together.  However, pain has altered my life so much it’s no longer recognizable to me.

When I worked my butt off in high school and college did I imagine all my hard work would come to nothing because of chronic pain? No, of course not. I never imaged I’d be too disabled to function normally, and in too much pain to think clearly. That wasn’t even part of a landscape that I could imagine. Because who knows how disabling pain is until they’ve experienced it?

Pain is all encompassing

Pain is all encompassing. It takes over your body and mind and leaves rooms for little else. It wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you that you will never be able to live a normal life. you won’t be able to do simple things like sleeping, running, or working full time because pain will take everything from you.

Pain also reminds you to slow down and appreciate the little things. It teaches you to make small leaps and goals and to not be so hard on yourself. It teaches you the value of a person, even when society doesn’t believe that value is there.

 

Pain will also show you who you are, and who other people are. You’ll quickly find out that people can be both amazing and horrible, and you never know which will be which. You’ll be surprised by the people who’ll see your pain, and you’ll be astonished by the people who ignore it.

The new definition of pain

These days the opioid hysteria is changing everything about pain. Pain is no longer described as I have reported.

The newest definition of pain being proposed is:

An aversive sensory and emotional experience typically caused by, or resembling that caused by, actual or potential tissue injury.

Pain is an emotional experience? Pain is caused by a potential injury?

How about pain is caused by actual injury? How about pain causes emotional experiences? How about we pay attention to the basic definition of cause and effect?

But no, it’s easier to tell people in pain that they are just being emotional because we don’t want to give people opioids. Really, someone who has pain doesn’t need physical treatment, they just need to get over their feelings. It’s the old blame the victim standby.

PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO BE TREATED FOR THEIR PAIN

Maybe opioids aren’t the best treatment for someone, but they should always be considered as a last ditch option after everything else has been tried. Because at the moment, there is no alternative to opioids for pain management.

Look at the old definition of pain from the International Association for the study of pain:

An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.

I still dislike the reference to emotional experience, but this actually uses the word damage, which is appropriate. We know that pain causes damage, or at least we used to. Nowadays that knowledge is conveniently ignored while people in pain die of suicide.

I’m sure some people wonder why I’m writing about pain again. I plan to keep writing about pain until the current attitudes around pain change, because people deserve to be treated for pain. People deserve to not die because of pain. And people deserve to live their lives, even when they have pain.