Pain

Thankfully at this moment I'm not in a whole lot at the moment.I'm sure that after the surgery I'll be in a a bit more... but that's not the point now. It's the scale for the pain. This really made the XKCD comic about pain from a few months ago hit a lot closer to home.I learned from a friend who deals with the hospital system a bunch that the pain scale is standardized by the National Institutes of Health. I found the original reference to the NIH scale over at the Pain Consortium of NIH. Even then I'm having trouble with it. The numeric scale (the normal 0-10 scale) that I used yesterday has a well-defined 0-point. It's all good -- your happy place.The 10 though is severe and completely interferes with the Activities of Daily Living.The funny thing is that even at my worse (right before I went to the urgent care) I don't think it ever got worse than around a 6, maybe 7. I was able to get up and down stairs even with that.When I got home from the ride I was probably at a 6. The first thing I wanted was for En to take pictures. How messed up is that?Maybe I just have a really high pain tolerance. Maybe others have low tolerance?Thinking about it more I think my baseline for 10 is "Civil War Field Hospital Amputation."Even with that I can imagine more. I guess take the above scenario on top of a red ant colony, while someone is putting your hand in a vice with Rush Limbaugh blasting in your ear.15?