thoughts on pain tolerance

I'm about to eat a whole sandwich... and half a pain killer.

Seriously for about two whole months now I think there is something seriously wrong with my left wrist.  I don't remember injuring it but sometimes my thumb gets "stuck" when I open it too wide (like to grab something) and when it "pops"... ugh... shudder!... back in to place it is so painful it makes me want to punch a puppy in the face.  And I love puppies. 

So this morning when I instinctually reached with my left hand in a swift jerking motion to grab something that was about to fall off the table, I did something that made it hurt worse that it's ever hurt.   I decided to finally medicate it artificially for the first time.  A friend gave me two Vicodin pills weeks ago for my wrist, and I'd yet to take them.  Dang, I'm so glad I had them!  Because after this happened with my wrist I wanted to punch a whole litter of puppies in the face! 

As I cracked this pill in half, I tried really hard to remember if there was ever a time in my life (outside of giving birth) that I'd ever taken prescription pain medication that wasn't just a higher dose of tylenol or ibuprofen... I'm talking the "scary" kind of pain medication.  The kind rich ladies get addicted to.  Nope, I never had until the day I gave birth to Wolfie and after everything was over... after I'd gone through the entire ordeal without one gram of pain medication... I took a Percocet.... well, actually I just took half of one.

Some friends of mine have remarked that they think I have a high tolerance for physical pain.  I have tattoos (not as many or in many "painful" areas like some other friends I have), and while I remember them being painful, I don't remember feeling like I couldn't "handle" the pain.  I don't even remember feeling at any point like I needed to complain about the pain.  Maybe I just don't remember.  Que, my doula who was with me at the birth, told me that I never asked for any pain relief during the entire labor.  To be quite honest, asking for it was quite literally out of the question in my mind.  But even though I knew it to be an option, of course, I never felt like I "needed" it.  I just handled whatever came my way.

So, I am thinking about my wrist.  And I am thinking about how I've just been handling it for months now.  I mean, it's pretty painful.  At first I complained about it a lot.  I gasped and flinched every time it hurt.  I expressed my grievances to Ben often.  But in the last week or so (until this morning when I made it much, much worse) I hadn't really reacted to the pain even though it hasn't gotten any better.  It still hurt like a mother-effer every single day.   But I'd managed to get through my days recently without expressing the pain.

And I thought about this... whether maybe the pain actually had gotten a little better or whether my perception of it had gotten easier. 

And I couldn't help but relate this to emotional pain too.  I don't think the pain of losing your child will ever be "less" than it is at any given moment.  But how we handle the pain, or how we tolerate the pain, or how we perceive the pain becomes easier with time.  We get used to it.  We learn to use the other wrist to lift things that are heavy.  After weeks and weeks (or years and years) we know what to expect from the pain.  We know where it's coming from.  We know how to react.  We can channel that into other things.  We can express our pain in more thoughtful and intentional ways.

And maybe good things like spending time with friends, gardening, having a laugh or enjoying a delicious meal with your husband are the emotional equivalents of pain medication.  Nice, naturally-derived pain medication... for when "going it alone" does not suffice.  A prescription written by Jesus and filled at God's pharmacy.  Ok, now I'm just getting cheezy.  But seriously.

I've also learned from tolerating pain that it also changes your perception of other painful things.  One of the days when Wolfie was in the NICU our friend and priest, Dale, was pushing me in my wheelchair to the cafeteria.  We were rolling through all these hospital corridors... the sights and smells that reminded me of my dad when he was ill and dying.   Scary stuff.  But I didn't feel that way at that moment.  I remarked to Dale that I don't think I'll be as scared of hospitals anymore.

Pain sucks.  It has a purpose, that's for sure.  It lets us know that part of us is hurt or injured.  We need to feel the pain otherwise we might keep injuring ourselves (like the disease of leprosy).  Really painful things can burn or sting for a while.  It changes you.  It makes you think about things differently.  You might grow or learn to absorb the pain in "quiet" ways.  You might medicate.  You might re-injure yourself one day.  You might do painful things on purpose to acquire something or experience something you want to experience.

Maybe there is some bio-physical reason for why some people "tolerate" pain (or seem to) better than others.  But who's to say what is "better"?