https://www.believemypain.com/
Years ago I posted a study on here that came to the “same” conclusion. Which is, when asked, black people believe they don’t receive equal pain management, despite no medical difference in diagnosis. The absurdity is unreal.
Ok, weird thought here. I doubt most people understand pain. Breaking a femur is considered the absolute worst pain to experience. Even Child Birth is below it. I've broken a femur, and had to slowly heal which meant dealing with a lot of pain. Because of that I have a higher pain threshold.
I know people who have experienced a 5/10 at best. Since this is the highest pain they have experienced, it is all they have to compare to. So it may be low in reality, to them that is a 10. It then transfers. A 3 is actually a 6 or even an 8.
A friend of mine had a botched brain operation and has opinions on pain meds. Definitely a high count. So pain relief for the friend is very different than others. An aspirin is for a 3-4, while a friend who has only experienced a 6 will think they need a delatin for their pain. Yes I know I misspelled it.
So getting the same prescription might not work because of all these people who think their 2 is an 8.
That's not so much a "weird thought" as a cornerstone of how maturation works. Kids think having to go to bed is the worst thing in the world because in their particular frame of reference, it is. They've never experienced anything worse. Not yet. Life is about gradually having increasingly bad things happen to you and becoming stronger because of it.
In other words, good times create weak men.
We are currently in the “weak men create hard times” phase
The 10-point Pain rating scale is complete pseudoscience nonsense and has led to terrible outcomes. It was essentially created by Big Pharma to push opioid sales for chronic pain.
Those who work in healthcare will tell you that anyone who declares "I have a high pain tolerance" immediately has red flagged themselves as a nightmare patient with a personality disorder (not including OP, mostly neurotic and BPD women).
The only way to evaluate pain tolerance is to experience it, such as OP's experience with a femur fracture.
Can you explain this connection? I'm curious how this manifests.
TBH I really can't flesh it out more. It's simply a dark humor healthcare meme.
It's through experience.
I would say it's mostly women that declare this to you in practice.
But someone who authoritatively declares "I have a high pain threshold" will inevitably down the road be one of those "I know my body types" who wouldn't listen to reason and inevitably will be demanding opioids and inappropriate treatments down the road.
Edit: r/medicine are all insufferable COVIDian traitors to the profession, but here's an old thread discussing the phenomenon
Edit2: Giving it a little more thought, I think it's patients self-identifying as "terminally unique". "I'm not like the other girls, doc". It's a disclosure that they have an inflated sense of self and hence expectations that they are better than the average bear.
Few people with actual high pain tolerance will word it like that, they'll word it like "just get it fucking done, I'll live.", because a side effect of developing a high pain tolerance is realizing just how much pain one can be in... And usually not wanting to test that limit further.
As for "it's mostly women", plenty of scientific studies on that; women have much lower pain tolerance levels than men for both sustained over time and intensity. If they didn't produce a shitton of very strong stuff naturally in their body in childbirth, the human species wouldn't've made it, but that's not their normal mental state: A male crackhead can also take quite a bit of pain at the peak of his high.
Damn. How did you break a femur and how do I avoid that
Look both ways when crossing the street. Especially in a rural town in Oregon where motorhomes go 50 MPH.
In general quite easily, the femur is the hardest bone in your body since it has to literally carry most of your mass almost all the time. If you are in a situation where it can be broken either you fucked up a while ago or someone else is about to cause you a significant injury. Either way it's probably too late to avoid happening.
I have personally found that one's perception of pain is closely tied to one's mental state. In my early 20s when I was in the depths of depression, I felt constant aches and pains all over my body, and every little niggle or physical inconvenience would manifest itself as physical pain, to the point where I thought there was something seriously physiologically wrong with me.
Now that I am married, exercise regularly, and am successful in my career, my overall daily experience of pain is greatly reduced. Things which I used to have to take pills for I can shrug off without issue. I presume this is because the body produces more natural pain killers when you are in a better mental state. That might go someway to explain how different people's pain threshold changes not just with their experience of pain, but their life circumstances.
That is a great insight. I've found that I work harder because I have a wife and kids. This is partially from trying to afford them.
I think it may also be because, when you’re depressed, you tend to both focus on the negatives, and have less going on in your life, so focus on “the small stuff” like pain, aches, etc., more…
But in general, yeah, I would 100% back this up, from my own anecdotal experience, even based on my weirdly mixed life experiences in the last six months or so (really bad situation, then good, to kind of bad again)…
When I was in the “good” place, in general I felt much better, and coped better with my chronic illness, than I did either before or after that period. Unfortunately…
Which I guess just means I have to work harder to get back to “the good place”, like it sounds like you have done, too.
I mostly just lurk on this board, but I do see you post quite frequently. From what I have gathered of your life, the best advice I can offer is to pick a path and stick with it, regardless of the difficulties that crop up.
That's what I had to do to get out of the dark place I found myself in. I realised part of the reason I hadn't made any progress in life is because I felt overwhelmed by choice. I had a tiny bit of experience being an intern for an IT company, so I basically said 'Right, this is what I'm going to do come hell or high water, because it's definitely going to be better than wallowing in self-pity.' That gave me the motivation to pick myself up and go to university, and really take it seriously, not just to piss around as I would have done if I was 18.
Did I know if I would really enjoy working in IT? No, not really. It's scary making those kind of decisions because you cut yourself off from all the other possibilities of what you could do in life. At some point you have to take a leap of faith, though. In most cases you will find that success in one area tends to lead to success in other, unexpected areas of life.
Thanks, yeah. I'm trying to pick myself up again, and get back to doing Uni as soon as I can (if my Uni will even let me back in, lol), but yeah...
I guess I could have stuck out what I was doing in Sweden, but the cognitive dissonance of "This is fucking bullshit and I feel bad just being here, never mind the fact that I am actively losing money here, and am not allowed to work to earn more", in what was effectively a cult, made me decide not to stick it out. Though they did shame me for "being a quitter" when I left, lol...
But yeah. Unfortunately I keep getting very sick, so even when I pick myself up mentally, my body tends to... Not play along, or at least makes it extremely difficult. Which is just... My reality now, sadly.
However I'm trying. And I'll probably return to Sweden at some point. Just in... Different circumstances, I hope, lol.
Good advice, anyway!