Do you really have a high pain tolerance?

Pain tolerance is a strange concept #paintolerance

[macxavier]

Chronic conditions really screws up your perception of pain. Being ignored when you say you hurt doesn't help either.

[Skag_Sisyphus]

I was not being taken serious, was in agony, could not take a deep breath because it felt like my lungs were on fire, i got eye rolls and got booted despite having a very, very low oxygen content (was told to "just take some deep breaths" and ill be fine, ) not getting the chest x ray i begged for, and being unable to walk very fast without pass I ng out, was wheeled out. I back in an hour later, demanded a chest x ray. This time i refused the wheel chair and tried to force myself to keep up, knowing i was going to pass out. I did pass out and got a gash on my forehead. The doctor i saw paened me off on another doctor, who reluctantly listened to.my chest, frowned, put in for a chest x ray and it turns out my lungs were all fluid.

The next time i went in, i described the extreme pain i kept feeling for long periods a couple times a year and how i was completely unable to function. When it was clear that i was, again, not being listened to, that my protests that i don't want painkillers, i want ANSWERS or to figure out how to make the pain stop. Finally, the next time i was asked with an annoyed sigh what i would rate my pain at, i turned on a lighter and burned my arm, stone faced, and said, "worse than this, but not too much worse than this."
They got incredibly upset and later sent a psych consult. A month later, i was diagnosed with a kidney infection and after an ultrasound, asked of i had recently passed a kidney stone because ome of my ureters was incredibly dilated.

Pro tip: if medical staff, unprompted, keep reminding you that they are not giving you pain pills, and continue to remind you after you have stated that you don't want pain pills, that they will not give you pain pills, do not tell them, "i don't want your baby asprin! If i wanted to get high, i could go down the street and buy more potent drugs for 20 bucks, hassle free and i wouldn't have to wait 6 hours in the e.r. for it

[lisaturner]

I came into the ER with horrible pain. But I'm not the type of person to cry and carry on. I told them my pain was a 9. After blood work and an ultrasound the doctor came back in with morphine in his hand. I had a gallstone blocking a duct and pancreatitis. I needed emergency surgery. The doctor said usually ppl with my lab results are balled up in the corner screaming in pain. I was like I told you my pain was a 9.

[absolootlynot]

I'm autistic and in all seriousness I had to FIGHT for my back surgery and was trapped on my couch for 6 months. I don't express pain "properly" I'm always more pressed to explain my situation than to roll around or cry. It took months not only for proper pain medication but also just scans and surgery. It took forever. I literally couldn't sit up for longer than 2-3 minutes but because I was always calm, no one cared.

[Emily-me]

The scary part about pain not being taken seriously isn’t even not getting pain medication. It’s missing an urgent diagnosis.

[kassandra]

I am 26, and when I was 20, I had pain in my hip when I would sleep. After a few months, I went to my doctor because the pain was now also when I would go from a sitting to standing position. The orthopedic doctor did not believe that anything was wrong because I wasn't in constant pain. He was very rude and dismissive. I asked for a referral to a doctor 2 hours from me. That surgeon was AMAZING. He listened and never made me feel crazy. I ended up having a 4 hour surgery, 2 weeks before my 21st birthday, because of how extensive the damage was in my hip. After the surgery, he told my parents that he didn't understand how I wasn't in constant excruciating pain.

[hopehowell]

You nailed it. A few months ago I was in the ER for a major medical event. Nurses kept telling me I was so polite considering how much pain I was in. I'm like "yay I'm in a lot of pain but it's not your fault I'm in pain. You're job is to help and you're doing it."

[nibbles]

This reminded me of when I started having migraines. I was young, only 11, maybe, and they wanted me to keep a journal of the pain, when, if I noticed a trigger, etc. The highest number I wrote was 7 and it was "I'm out of commission" laying in a dark, quiet room. Doctor looked at the book and immediately said they didn't believe I'd had a 7 without even asking about what I described as 7. Without hesitation, I threw that book straight in the trash while making eye contact and never wrote another thing. Why fucking bother if they only response is "you're wrong"?

[street]

My son has autism. When he was younger, he didn’t have an awareness of pain. I knew something was up with his foot, so I took him to the ER (complicated medical history means we skip right over Urgent Care, and it was the weekend with no access to our regular doctor). He was running and walking, no problem, when we got there. Luckily the staff was familiar with him, so they took my concern seriously. He hopped down off of the gurney when the tech came to get him for his X-ray.

His foot was broken in two places. The same thing happened a couple months later to the other foot, broken in one place.

Without their awareness and willingness to accept that he didn’t perceive pain “normally, ” not only would he have been on two broken feet for who knows how long, we never would have been led to investigate further and find out he had a few conditions working together to make it so easy for him to fracture; that could have led to grave consequences.

[AliciaMajo]

As somebody who has never reacted a lot to pain, I had to learn that lesson pretty young, when I was 3 my brother and I were play fighting, and he yeeted me off my parents' bed, I cried and was comforted, went to bed, and we thought it was all good.
The next morning when my mom woke up, she was pleasantly surprised by the house being so quiet, and when she went to the living room she found me reading and not making a sound.
She knew that was not normal, she saw I was holding my arm close to my chest and she took me to the hospital, they gave me an x-ray and my arm was very broken.
So if you don't/your kid doesn't react a lot to pain, don't be afraid to tell people you have a high pain tolerance, so many of my injuries and illnesses were left untreated for longer than they should've because I didn't show how hurt I was in a typical way.

[fyre]

I broke all 3 bones in my left arm as a 6yr old. They were vertical pressure cracks. No one took me seriously because I cried only once right when it happened at the skate rink, but moved and did everything normally... until my mom looked out the kitchen window to me on the trampoline holding my arm to jump... 1 week after the incident I was now finally in a full arm cast for what felt like FOREVER.

They never believed me when I said the baby was coming - BOTH times... and epidurals didn't take. They made me call 3 times and wait 45 mins to go to the bathroom and then YELLED at me for getting up on my own... like, I told you the epidural never took and you made me wait for almost an hour. I gotta pee.

[rheah]

My cousin has an incredibly high pain tolerance that she believes was brought about by suffering high levels of pain as a child. I have been with her while she experienced delayed care in a hospital because she was reporting her pain as low enough that the docs didn’t believe something was seriously wrong until physical scans came back confirming a very serious condition. I stood there while they told her that they hadn’t considered what it turned out to be because they had never seen someone with the internal issues she had without the patient expressing extreme physical pain that made it almost impossible for them to even communicate. Meanwhile, my cousin had driven herself 40min to the hospital, walked in on her own and calmly explained everything very wrong she was feeling in her body, including the fact that she would place her pain at a ‘4’ but that she had a very high pain tolerance so they should probably consider that more of an ‘ 8 or 9’. Obviously, they didn’t believe her about the pain thing until they got her scans back.

[ghostratsarah]

I've had experiences where the oain should have had me crying- as a kid doctors expected me to be screaming- because it was stuff THEY would be screaming over, I barely grimanced and never complained. But my fibromyalgia flare ups have me bawling- it took a decade to finally find a doctor who acknowledged it. honestly it's because I was so used to the fibro pain, starting at a young age, that getting stitches dug out of infected wounds and such were so trivial. And now that I've been getting treatment for ny fibro, minor stuff does make me say "ow".

[phoebehuckabay]

I really like the pain scale that specifically describes how the pain affects your daily life. Like 4 is distracting but can do usual activities while 6 is hard to ignore and makes you avoid usual activities!

[babetweirdgirl]

Yep. Been told it can't possibly hurt as much as I say it does because I can still be "cheerful and polite". I'm cheerful and polite while pushing out a baby sans pain meds, while getting tattoos, and running on a twisted ankle in bootcamp.

[bethelbethel]

My kid was very sick between the ages of 18 months and 3 years. He learned how to just tolerate pain, because he was too young to express it when it was at a level below very high.

When he was 13 he broke his wrist. (Distal radial ulna. A foosh) I knew the moment he stepped in our door that it was broken merely because he was holding his arm in a protective position.

We went to the er immediately. 7 pm…. The triage nurse actually tried to tell us to go home. Because “kids with a broken arm come in crying”

She made us wait until 4 am to to even get called in for an exam. 6 am X-rays. 7am cast and pain meds, then home.

Yes. Some people have a high pain tolerance. And it’s often because they were frequently in a lot of pain before they developed the ability to express their pain with words.

If someone says they are hurting? BELIEVE THEM.

[meaghanobrien]

I was diagnosed with complex globally involved Ehlers Danlos syndrome when I was 8 and showed symptoms before that, the pain scale isn’t meant for people like me, if I read it and fit into it as best as I can, I’m at a 6 or 7 daily

[crollo]

I had surgery the other week. Without any pain meds, it hurt less than my normal daily pain. Really put things into perspective

[SisTeko]

What aggrivates me is I dont scream or holler so they send me home saying rhey wstched me and I dont seem to be in pain but I get quiet.

[paranoiarpincess]

I was born with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. As I get older, my tolerance goes up. Which is weird because my sensitivity in certain areas is also going up.

If I'm in pain every day, I start to feel numb to it, but only a little, but the longer I have it, because it's degenerative, the worse it's gets, so I'm constantly just getting more and more tolerant. My previous bad days can't compare to my current bad days. My current “good” days used to be my previous fair days. And I get numb to the lowest amount off pain, but as my body gets worse, the pain gets worse, and the level had already maxed out. Today for example, was one of my worst days yet. I was in so much pain my body would twitch at random, completely out of my control, and I couldn't keep myself conscious. I never used to get so bad that my body would literally rather knock me out than deal with it. But that's my new worst, which means I can tolerate more pain than I had in the past.

I tell doctors about this because I want them to realize that when I hurt, it isn't subbed my toe hurt, it's my body is literally knocking me out, possibly to stop me from going crazy? Maybe because being in that much pain used all my energy? I'll likely never know, I mean how would people even begin to measure THAT? But that much -hurt.

It's so they know I'll laugh if they say “oh, so an extra strength Tylenol for that headache?” bitch please, I'm currently taking something that has the metaphorical ability to laugh at you for suggesting that. When they don't seem phased, I tell them my birthing story. I tell them:

“I didn't think I was in enough pain to get my epidural, so I waited for it to be that extreme pain that everyone always talks about. I then remembered that some people don't feel as much pain as others. I started feeling a bit of pain, not unbearable, but definitely not fun, so I told the nurses I might need that epidural. They joked “you're not crying, you're not screaming, you're not ready”. I asked them to check anyway and within literal seconds people were running around to get ready to put in my epidural. I was nearly 10cm dilated and had they wasted any time at all, it would have been too late. In any normal circumstance, with any normal kid, I would have been able to give birth without it, I'm sure. But, it wasn't normal... He, isn't normal. As he came out, my doctor said “the technical term is corkscrewed...” he spun as he came out... With his shoulders -_-. Basically, while the doctor was stitching me up, I asked her how many stitches out was going to be... She wouldn't answer me. But my stepmom was there and said it was around 65. My doctor said “sure... We'll go with that...” it was clear there were more. That kid must have had sharp shoulders lol.

So yes, I'm glad I had the epidural. I'm glad I couldn't feel the clearly a bajillion stitches. I'm glad I couldn't feel the doctors literally jumping up and down while pushing on my stomach. I'm glad those kinds painful, but only marginally worse than my normal cycle cramps were gone. I'm even a little glad that I had to ask the doctors if I was pushing because I legit couldn't tell, if only because looking back it was kinda funny. I'm glad that at that moment, I couldn't feel the pain my arthritis may or may not have decided to inflict upon my legs, if only for that relatively short time. I'm most glad that my now teenager ended up being safe, healthy and is the most wonderful experience of my life. But, I'm not glad it meant I would go out of remission, I would slowly, over the next 14 years become bedridden, wheelchair bound, have panic attacks and emotional breakdowns over feeling like I'm not a good enough mom because I can't play with my kid, I can't teach him sports, to ride a bike, how to swim, fish, fight if ever he has to (were a pacifist family, but sparring is really fun... If I hadn't be born with Arthritis, I would have signed up for martial arts and gymnastics and If likely be a dancer or a teacher... Sorry, massive tangent lol).

The thing I hear most from others is about how “strong” I am. My points in all this? If someone who you think of as a “strong” human being tells you they have a high pain tolerance, it's because they want you to realize that that strength is working for and against them, either physically or mentally, and sometimes both. It's because they're trying to tell you to skip the basics, they have their patient diploma. You can save time and give things to them more straight. These are people who've been through shit, the people who've heard all the base line stuff before. The people who could work in triage without being trained. These are our kintsugi, our broken people who have been previously repaired with gold and made both stronger and more beautiful by people like you, whom take the kindness and care to wonder about things like this.

Thank you ❤.