How do you handle pain?

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Are you a yeller? A whiner? A silent sufferer. A saint?

Me? I'm all of those - at various times. Heh.

Catherine

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), October 25, 1999

Answers

I suffer stoically. I play the martyr. Then I get ticked off if no one notices how heroically I'm suffering.--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), October 25, 1999.

When I first got sick, people were sympathetic for awhile, then they don't want to hear your whiney ass :) So I tried to learn something from it. I've learned how to be a little nicer to myself and tell that drill sargeant in my head to fuck off. I've had to walk slower and now I see things. I take an hour at a time, and that, is a *good thing* coming from something that always lived "out there" going for the next goal. So, yar I have progressed from denying I ever was in pain to being all of the above :O

-- Tree (pmanzella@hotmail.com), October 25, 1999.

I struggle not to make a sound when I'm in serious pain. It's almost as if I make a sound I am somehow making it more real.

Now, if it's minor pain, say if I bump in to something or stub my toe, I tend to swear loudly.

-- Moira (moira@diarist.net), October 25, 1999.


I used to suffer silently but ten years of being babied by a man who knows how to care for someone sick or in pain have taught me to lay back, whine a little and be waited on. Even a little whining buys me the Princess treatment, so whine I do!

-- (viv@rosamundi.com), October 25, 1999.

I'll only swear or yelp when I am in the middle of doing something important and I hurt myself, or I am hurt by something.

Otherwise, I rarely feel pain - I have an amazing tolerance to it, and so things that normally have other people weeping for their mommy has me letting out an exasperated sigh.

So, I tend to keep quiet.

There is also a part of me that *likes* pain. ;)

-- krystyn (eisllew@msn.com), October 25, 1999.



oh. um. not very well.
i've had too much of the stuff in the past year. gone, now, thanks to the wonders of surgery and all that. these days it's just the grumbly headaches that too much work and not enough sleep throw my way. that gets dealt with easily: 2 ibuprofen, and a small bout of whining.
saintly suffering is no fun.
if i stub my toe, slice my finger with a scalpel, trip over the cat, i swear as fruitily as i possible can, and at high volume. i then get entirely fascinated by my own blood, or by any bruises that appear, and am then too amused to complain.
big old long term pain, though, that requires zombie drugs and a total shut down of my life...i get tired of it. so tired of it. i hate it and resent it, and feel tossed around by its waves. i don;t want to go there again in a hurry. i'm no silent sufferer, because it eats into everything i do and feel. it twists my moods, and destroys my concentration, and edges me into unbearably selfish behaviour.
if the patron saint of functioning hips is listening, give me a break for a few years, ok?

-- heyoka (katie@heyoka.com), October 26, 1999.

All those sorts of ways. Immediate pain is usually followed by, "OH! FUCK!" though. A recent moment of pride occurred at my place of employment when I dropped a Very Heavy Book on my foot and said Not One Word. I bet the little old lady browsing the Bible section appreciated it too!

-- Marianne Aldrich (marseillaise@hotmail.com), October 27, 1999.

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