Perception of Pain
Perception of pain.
My shoulder hurts. Sixty-three years of punching above my weight has taken a toll. Medical professionals use a one-to-ten scale for pain. Linear because that’s the clean way. One is next to nothing, ten is hospital bound. Logic says five is half way between, some would say that is common sense. Except with pain perception, there is no such thing as common sense.
Most of us know an open flame is going to burn us if we stick our finger in it. How we perceive the future consequences, that is our individual sense.
My pain scale has benchmarks. One / two, inconsequential. Three / four, a memory hogging app in the background slowing down everything else. Five / six, bandwidth reduced, resources reallocated.
At seven, conversations become impossible.
I don’t know what happens after seven.
My wife’s scale is more aggressive. Each level is twice the previous level. Her ten is five-hundred-and-twelve times her one. Her normal day is seven. She has had three of the most brutal knee surgeries possible. After the first surgery, the surgeon came into the waiting room looking as if he’d just walked out of the operating room in a M*A*S*H episode. The room got quiet after that.
She has been intimate with ten a couple of times.
That sounds like an exaggeration. During the third Maquet osteotomy, a two-inch long stainless steel Phillips-head screw was used to hold the split section of the tibia in place a few inches below the knee. Two years later the head of the screw began causing problems. She had it removed in the doctor’s office without anesthesia while awake. Apparently, that was not a ten, nor close to a ten. She drove home after.
I hope I never meet ten.
For those unfamiliar with a Maquet osteotomy, an animated demonstration of the procedure can be found here: Maquet osteotomy
What struck me most is how effectively you illustrate the limitations of language itself. We all understand the one-to-ten scale because it is simple, but your examples reveal how wildly different those numbers can be from person to person.
The contrast between your benchmarks and your wife’s was especially powerful. The story of the screw removal is one of those details that instantly recalibrates a reader’s understanding of what “pain” can mean.
I also appreciated the understated humor woven throughout. It keeps the piece grounded and human while allowing the final sentence to carry tremendous weight.
“I hope I never meet ten” is such a simple ending, yet after everything that came before it, it feels profound.
Monica