Tag Archives: Pain Scale

When you suffer from chronic pain, the 1-10 pain scale is a joke. (Rate your pain from nothing to your worst ever, from 1-10, in case your fortunate enough not to be familiar with it.)

In reality, that scale is a joke anyway because it’s totally subjective. Someone’s ten might be someone else’s five. In fact, this ridiculous scale is part of what makes it so hard for chronic pain patients to “prove” we’re really in such significant pain. When you’re in pain all the time, especially when you’re in a situation like mine in which the pain level doesn’t vary much, asking me to rate it is kind of like asking for me to tell you what my leg feels like without touching it with my hands. It’s just there. Always there. I can’t rate how “present” my leg is in a practical way. One of my friends with chronic pain jokingly said that every time she’s asked to rate her pain it feels like she’s taking a test she’s about to fail.