“Rate your pain right now on a scale of zero to ten,” said the physical therapist.
“Right now I have no pain at all. But if I go like this (I demonstrate going like this) it hurts.”
“When do you need to do that?”
Thus began an explanation of port side jumping.
“How much does it hurt then?”
“I don’t know…maybe a six? It’s not that I can’t live with a six, it’s just that I’d like to fix it if possible.”
I thought I knew what I was talking about with my "six". I’d recently seen “The Pain Scale” (the chart, not the movie) while visiting a relative in the hospital. It seemed geekworthy so I snapped a bad photo of it for posterity. On this scale, pain ranges from no pain, through “Annoying” then “Nagging, uncomfortable, troublesome” before the party goes south. “Distressing, miserable” is followed by “Intense, dreadful, horrible” topped off by “Unbearable, Excruciating.”
The Pain Scale seemed useful. I googled it to find a clean copy (my photo being miserable on the photography scale) only to discover that there are many different pain scales, ranging from this ridiculous example (using weather metaphors…”what’s your pain forecast” with pain level 10 being “Almost all activity cancelled today due to pain. You are ‘snowed in’”. I think if my doctor said that to me I’d cut off his ____ with a ____) to one that combines facial expression, body posture, and vocalization (“screaming” is sensibly associated with high pain.)
In the end I like the pain scale I started with. Could do without the pain, though. I have a small labral tear in my interior right hip, acquired by jumping of a planing windsurfing board into what I thought was deep water, but wasn’t. Half a year later it’s still Distressing in certain positions (landing a decent jump)…I aspire to Annoying. Hell, getting out of a drysuit is annoying!
(Above: The Pain Scale I found during a hospital visit. Below: My X-ray. Re the object towards the bottom: What, yours doesn't look like that?)
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