Describing Pain Can be Colorful

Let your doctor know how you really feel.

Cartoon by Lambert=King

Taking an older person to the doctor can be an enlightening/frustrating experience. My mother-in-law was a challenge to get information from. She would say she was in pain, but getting some idea of the degree of pain she was in was the challenge. Sometimes the doctor or nurse would ask, “On a scale of 1–10, how would you describe your pain?” And we were off.

“You can’t put a number to pain, “was a common response.

And heaven help the medical person who showed her the chart of happy faces who were progressively less happy.

To address this glitch in the medical system, I’ve put together some terms to help express the degree and severity of pain and medical conditions.

1: Talking about diarrhea can be a challenge.

Some words can occasionally be used in conjunction with diarrhea. Words like “‘explosive” and “intermittent” come to mind. Having said that, I have a friend who was inadvertently overly graphic in her description. She said her diarrhea came “in spurts.” Now there’s a word picture.

2: Referred pain can have a couple of applications.