Choose your words carefully when describing pain to your doctor — it can make all the difference
The first question your doctor will ask is where does it hurt. That’s an easy one. It’s the next question that usually creates the difficulties and often leaves patients tongue-tied: now can you describe the pain?
Describe what? Although we can usually figure out where it’s coming from, pain is very much inside of us, even when there is a visible injury on the body’s surface. We can’t see pain, touch it, hear it. So how can we possibly paint a picture of what is inaccessible to our senses, for pain — as Emily Dickinson, the American poet, once said — “has