Pain Scale: Bees!
As I grow older and more decrepit, I encounter 'the pain scale' more and more. As with any subjective rating system (see especially: movie ratings), it is hard to accurately place one's pain in an objective frame.
Subjectively, I say that I am living at about a 7, peaking to 8's and 9's on really bad days - and for me this mostly accurate. Compared to the worst pain I have ever felt I am living at about 70% of that in my day to day life. But that is relative to my own experience of pain, not an objective measure, useful to others.
That is why I saved this image when I happened upon it. It seems, to me, a useful and more or less universally objective scale for experienced pain.
Now, instead of 7-9 on the subjective scale, I can now say that I live at Pain Scale: Bees! (6) with occasional forays into 'crying' (7) and 'I can't move'. (8) I now also know that the worst pain I have ever felt in my life was a 'mauled by bears' level event.
It also, somehow, helps to be able to characterize my pain in such a 'cartoonish' way - "Ah, I wonder if today will be a Bees? or a Bees! day?" It makes things just a little more amusing.
