Humdrum 2: How We Feel
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about pain, about the words we use to describe how it feels. A friend recently went to urgent care because of pain in his lower abdomen and groin, a coworker had a molar unceremoniously yanked out of his mouth, another coworker has an elbow injury that requires icing, and I myself contracted a minor urinary tract infection.
And then there’s the pain of psychic wounds: a beloved dog passes, a relationship ends.
When I was in the doctor’s office describing my “pinpricks” of pain, I started second-guessing myself and wondering if that was the best way to describe this intermittent, wrong sensation. It definitely wasn’t a cramp, nor did it ache in the way my back does after I sat in a chair too long. It felt too small and concentrated to be a stabbing pain.
I was sure I picked the right words for myself, but what about for the doctor who was interpreting them? How could I know I was using the right words for her to understand what I was feeling, the right words that would lead to the correct diagnoses?
Once I started thinking about this, it became very easy to see pain afflicting pretty much everyone to some degree, from a strained muscles to tooth aches. I wondered how my friends would describe how their pain feels.
They could say “hurts,” “smarts,” “stings,” “throbs.” They could say something is excruciating or uncomfortable. They could use a scale, from 1-10. Would they talk about pinpricks?
My preoccupation with descriptions of pain boils down to how we humans communicate with each other. I think a lot about something David Foster Wallace said (or wrote? I forget where) about how each of us is trapped inside our own skulls, and to truly know how someone else feels is impossible. Whether or not you buy into that aside, the point is we experience the world internally and must find a way to communicate that out. Language is one way, albeit not the only way, we make ourselves understood.
I asked my sister, a doctor, about how she uses her patient’s descriptions of how their pain feels. Right off she mentioned the subjective nature of pain. Though helpful, she explained, it’s one clue of many (onset, location, associated symptoms, etc.) used to whittle down the list of possible causes, to find the source of the pain. Chest pain could be described as "pressure," but more things need to be understood before you could determine, say, a heart attack.
So my doctor probably wasn’t as fixated on my use of “pinprick” as I was, though that description could have served as a guide to help her understand what was wrong. I have no way of knowing if, for her, if she would have used the same word to describe a similar sensation. I don't know how she feels. The best I could do was be honest about how I was feeling. My doctor had more objective truths at her disposal to help me.
About This Newsletter
Humdrum is written by moi!, Christina Brandon, a user experience researcher, writer, and part bunny rabbit based in Chicago who is eternally intrigued by the strangeness of other humans.
I'm reading an essay I wrote at Miss Spoken on May 25 and am otherwise furiously scribbling to finish a memoir about teaching English in China. Inspired by Suzanne Wilder's neat collages, I also joined in #The100DayProject, making scrappy doodles. A lot have been about food so far. Check them out on Instagram.
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