The plan presently is that if I'm still in pain at the end of the week, I go in for an MRI. I don't know if I'll hold out that long, though. I'm unable to do the minor heavy lifting required for my work, but my supervisor had no problem giving me a helper when I need it.
One of the things that is hard about it oddly, is the whole "scale of 1-10, measure your pain" thing. I'm awful at subjectives like that. Like, is 10 supposed to be "such bad agony I can't even walk"? Is 1 a "minor irritant"? If it hurts no matter what I do, but I'm not screaming or nauseous from pain, is that 5+? I don't know how to describe it.
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
-- Hamilton: An American Musical
@Cupcake - this sounds awful! The 1-10 thing can be irksome, but I find that this chart helped me communicate after an accident that busted up my joints:
One thing I was told to keep in mind when describing things to medical people is to base the 1-10 score not for when you're managing & getting by, but when the pain is its most extreme.
Hope things settle soon!
I prefer this pain scale:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html
Edit: Of course XKCD has touched on this.
Feel better soon, Sweet Cuppin Cakes.
When I worked with a lot of rehab/therapeutic clients (and thus had to fill out a lot of specific charting/goals/treatment results paperwork for insurance and medical team purposes) we tried to be a little more specific with the pain numbers and what they meant, vs using the smiley face thing or just an unguided rate from 1-10.
0 - Absolutely pain free
1-3 Mild Pain - Able to do all activities of daily living with little to no modifications needed.
1- pain is present off and on but barely noticeable and often forgotten about.
2 - minor pain is annoying and definitely present most of the time with occasional stronger twinges.
3 - pain is annoying and distracting, but you can adapt and get used to it, still performing your usual activities without moderation.
4-6 Moderate Pain - interferes significantly with daily life activities
4 - moderate pain. You can be distracted from it if you are very engaged in something else, but only for a certain period of time, and you are starting to need to modify your daily activities because you can't function fully.
5 - moderately strong pain. You cannot ignore it for longer than a few minutes. You can push through to so many or your daily activities or social activities, but you must limit both significantly.
6 - moderately strong pain that significantly impacts your daily activities and cannot be ignored or distracted from at all. This level of pain impacts your ability to speak normally/carry on an undistracted conversation.
7-10 Severe pain - Disabling/cannot perform functions of daily living
7 - the pain interferes or severely limits your ability to sleep. It is severe pain that dominates your senses and significantly limits your ability to perform daily tasks or keep up with social endeavors.
8 - intense, acute pain. Severely limits any/all physical activities. Conversation with others is extremely difficult
9 - excruciating pain. Involuntary crying out/vocalizations. Unable to coherently converse with others.
10 - unspeakable pain, delirious, bedridden, unable to perform any tasks or communicate with people.
Unmedicated childbith pain is usually described as a 7-8 level, for reference. If you're at a 9-10 you're in the hospital.
Pain scale is not really talking about pain alone, it's pain and /function/. If you are at the doctors office talking with them coherently during your appointment, having walked there under your own power you are not at a 9 or 10 on the pain scale even if it is indeed the worst pain you personally have experienced.
I dunno about you, but when I wrack my pinky toe on the bookshelf corner, I don't want to go on living.
And yes. "Moderate pain" can be profoundly hard to deal with, and even provoke suicidal ideation, especially when it's chronic. I'm not saying that people aren't impacted severely even if their pain isn't a 9 or 10 on the therapeutic scale before anyone jumps my shit for that.
Just--when you are talking to a rehab team or for a functional diagnosis, it's helpful to be sure to describe both the nature of the pain itself but also how it impacts your daily life and ability to care for yourself/do your basic activities of daily living.
The pain scale is supposed to incorporate that, but sadly a lot of providers do not do a good job of educating folks on what the numbers mean (and perhaps don't know themselves!) so it sometimes is pretty useless. 
Totally agree with the above, by the way. Especially on a long-term scale.
My migraines? Daily average is probably around a 4-5, with days that hit a 6.
But after a few months, I hit about a day a week where I seriously do just consider walking into the neuro and begging them for the paperwork and everything to get on short-term disability or similar on my insurance because just keeping up is hard.
Even moderate pain gets to where you just can't manage... so even if you sit there and in that every moment go 'Well, yah, this isn't the worst thing' but if you have to consider dealing with it day after day, you know it'd get hard. So make sure to consider that, as well, when talking to a doctor. Could you, feasibly, handle it if it went on long term. If the answer is no... make sure to communicate that to your doctor.
@mietze Very much this. My default state is moderate as per the description there (the full range, depending on the day, and on a super lucky day I get down to a 3) since a car accident I was in when I was in college.
I try not to think about the things I've read that mention how living in a constant state of pain -- of almost any grade -- actively degrades the brain based on how much it has to constantly compensate, especially in combination with the whole 'the brain just rewrites things over time as new pathways form and develop' thing. Lots of just not wanting to look there often.
This isn't anger so much as it is.. 'ugh'...
I had a student ask me, for the first time in my (admittedly short) career why the save icon in Word was a strange symbol.
Kill me now.
He/Him
I had a student ask me, for the first time in my (admittedly short) career why the save icon in Word was a strange symbol.
Tell them it represents a jerry can, the kind that used to be on the back of Jeeps, and that the symbol/shape was chosen because it means "in case your work goes up in flames."
This isn't anger so much as it is.. 'ugh'...
I had a student ask me, for the first time in my (admittedly short) career why the save icon in Word was a strange symbol.
Kill me now.
The symbol is an ancient Linear A hieroglyph meaning "preservation", obviously. I mean, it's been colored and stuff, but.
Is it bad that what I think is even worse is that this student couldn't take two seconds and google it before asking you? Learn to fend for yourself, youngling! Find your own answers!
I imagine a 20-year-old today looking at a floppy disk the same way I look at my dad's 8-track tapes.
And I realize I have joined the Olds.
@Three-Eyed-Crow My father still mourns the loss of his Betamax.
<clinks glass> Cheers. You will be issued a rocking chair on the porch and can claim your shotgun full of rock salt from the creepy shed out back, we have coffee, tea, and lemonade here on the porch, with or without booze.
Oh fucking well.
@surreality Some people go the other way with this.
I was listening to the radio in the car yesterday and this lady was saying she's 'trying to teach her daughter values' by not having her be spoiled by getting everything when she wants it, like they did back in the day! So for example she only lets her watch Netflix on pre-determined hours - as in, at 8pm instead of on-demand.
The old paradigm didn't arise because it was the choice but due to technical limitations which have been lifted since; perhaps there's something to teach a child about instant gratification, I don't know. It just sounds a bit backwards, like forcing a kid to watch black and white TV when color ones came out because that's how they did it until then.
On pain scale, I'm always like 'meh'. Like the last time I went in I was like.. "Oh.. maybe a 4 or 5." The medical staff was like, "Well there is no blood flow to the entire left of your heart. You probably could have said 8 or 9." I also have a high pain tolerance to things. My broken ribs were a 3 or 4 (which I broke 4 of them). So it's so subjective really. Apparently, almost everyone in the ER always says their pain is at a 10.
As to being old. I'm there and I get it. I had an 8 track when I was in HS because I thought it was cool. Those things don't get me as much as referencing songs or people that no one knows anymore. Like how do you not know Knight Rider?! Or how have you not heard of Princess Bride?
@Arkandel "Because that's how we used to do it" is the 'tradition' argument. Valid in some contexts, but even then only barely so much of the time.
Sounds more like spite in the case of that mother.
it would be nice if society would stop telling men they're evil because they're biologically wired to get a stiffy and are incapable of controlling it.
Nobody knows about your stiffy unless you act like a dick about it. The insistence on acting out is the problem. Besides, society, more often than not, still rewards men who do, even if more folks have started bitching about it.
@Cupcake - this sounds awful! The 1-10 thing can be irksome, but I find that this chart helped me communicate after an accident that busted up my joints:
One thing I was told to keep in mind when describing things to medical people is to base the 1-10 score not for when you're managing & getting by, but when the pain is its most extreme.
Hope things settle soon!
