I read something recently that really moved me -- one man's account of what he calls "pain beyond words." It was in a New York Times blog, and it contained some profound statements to which I related at the deepest level, including this:
"I have no patience these days with the Nietzschean cliché, 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.' I’ve found that the deepest pain holds no meaning. It is not purifying. It is not ennobling. It does not make you a better human being. It just is.
All the worst pain does is reduce us to our most primal animal. We want it to stop. We want to survive. It short-circuits any sense of self, diminishes us to a bundle of biological reflexes."
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." I did used to believe in this philosophy, and in some cases I do think it's accurate. When it comes to severe, unrelenting pain, however, it can make us feel weak, lost and alone. Pain can take everything good away from you. I don't come out of those episodes stronger -- I come out of them shaken to the core.
"I've found that the deepest pain holds no meaning . . . . It just is." When I was going through unmedicated labor with my first child (pre-fibromyalgia), the pain was intense but held some meaning. When something is wrong in the body that needs to be fixed, pain holds some meaning. But if, like me, you've been in the emergency room afraid for your life, only to have long-awaited test results show "nothing is wrong," you truly know the meaninglessness of this kind of pain.
"All the worst pain does is reduce us to our most primal animal." This is a beautiful and accurate description of what I've been unable to express in the past -- the desperation we face, the loss of reason and rationality, the absolute, primal need for relief. Now.
The reporter who wrote this is Dana Jennings, a prostate cancer patient who's been through several surgeries. I hope he never has to deal with that kind of pain again, and on behalf of those who have to face that pain on a regular basis, I thank him for doing what he can to make other people understand.
- Read more: Pain Beyond Words, and an Impulse Just to Endure, By Dana Jennings
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Hi Adrienne,
This made me think also, If you try to take care of a injured animal don’t they sometime try to bite you and growl in responce to the pain and injury?..
It makes me wonder if it is our own instincs that make us lash out because it seems no one understands what depth our pain is, almost like a animal can not communicate with us to what kind of pain there in and where it is comming from or how bad it hurts. And we are almost like those animals trying to tell Dr.’s and Family and Friends how bad we hurt and they don’t understand how bad this pain we have is that is driveing us crazy almost mad trying to get people to listen and help us, but like the translation of our pain is in some diffrent language and no one understands us at all, then we want to bite and growl at almost anyone who crosses us when we a in a bad pain flair.
I do hope this makes since, It just hit a part of myself deep within the soul and made a world of since to me.
Thank You for putting this out here for us.
I’ve had fibromyalgia for 23 years, and the only way I survived it is by having some form of pain medication. I never took any type of opioid painkillers, and I’m proud of that. I got by on NSAIDs (aspirin and ibuprofen) for a long time but paid the price with GI bleeding, and then switched to Tylenol for many years. Now I’m on the maximum recommended dose of Lyrica (100 mg three times a day) and still suffering but it’s bearable. I wonder what I would have done in ancient times. I probably would have deliberately done something shameful or sinful so that the townspeople would stone me to death to put me out of my misery. And I’m not kidding! And now I’ll get off this computer because my back and neck are killing me and I’d rather watch my soaps! Good Night!
Valerie,
That makes a lot of sense to me. It’s so simple to understand when you look at it that way, that we’re lashing out like a wounded animal. It makes me think of when I was pregnant and wanted to chase down and yell at every person who cut me off in traffic to let them know what they could have cost me if they’d caused a wreck. My husband called it the “Mama Bear” instinct. I think now I’m a “Wounded Tiger” instead.
No. There is nothing noble about pain. Pain traps you in a box of misery. It makes you want to howl. It robs time. It robs creativity. It robs energy. It isolates you if you let it. It takes the joy out of living. No. There is nothing noble about pain. No one is going to pin a medal on you because you live with it. If you want to keep friends, you can’t talk about it to often – People tire of hearing about your aches and pains, and let’s face it everyone thinks you look normal. Only you know it isn’t so. Normal is only a mask you have to wear amidst the pain.
Oh my gosh, Marcella, what a deep last sentence! Actually the whole paragraph.When I think of pain, I do have FM/CFS. But it can’t compare at any time to my dads’ pain with Mesothelioma. He was a guinnea pig for NIH and they removed his heart sack, lung sack, 2 ribs, entire lining of his chest wall and his life only to offer him 10 to 18 months to live instead of 8-10 months. He lived 18 months in hell, his pain. He died at 60, my mom died 5 months earlier at age 61 with heart disease. When I think of pain I see his entire life consumed with a little tablet that he carried in his pocket that he wrote the time and medication that he took. His life revolved around all the meds that didn’t really help and when he could take the next one. The last 3 months, he had a permanent morphine catheter implanted into his spinal cord. Such pain. No glamor, no trophy for his curagious fight. Just an only child left behind that remembers when her pain seems unbearable, I can bear it because I know how much worse it could be. This is not to in any way make light of anyone elses pain or fatigue. I also have that. But no matter how bad it gets, it could be worse. God bless everyone who has fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome because we all share a bubble that we are in that looks fine and well and normal to all those on the outside. All the family members, friends, that don’t believe or understand us. I told my doctor a couple of weeks ago when I pointed to my gigantic 20+ year old chart of weird accidents and stuff, “to my husband that would be a chart of hyperchodriac”. He said, “Or, a chart of Fibromyalgia!”. He made my day.
Chronic pain is the worst, and really doesn’t make me stronger! Dr. Richard E. Busch III, a nationally recognized Doctor of Chiropractic, has come out with a great book titled, “Surgery not Included.” A true godsend for me! I am so grateful that there are other ways, besides surgery, to treat pain!
I think that most (if not all) of the time philosophers, psychologists, theologians, sociologists, and (dare I say it?) doctors get things only partially right.
There may well be an element of truth in Nietsche’s statement (although I’d want to see the context in which he said that to better understand what he meant), Maslow’s well-known heirarchy of needs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs or http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm) might also be relevant here.
I think that when we have the worst pain (10+ on the 1 to 10 pain scale) we’re down at the very bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, which in my mind is where our base physiological, animalistic even, instincts take the fore. We go to survival mode and everything else is irrelevant.
I’ve had fibromayalgia for many years and the only ‘medicine’ that saved was starting gluten-free diet. I recommend it very highly as it changed my life for better. I thought the diet would be difficult, but it’s not. By the way, no doctor suggested it! Yoga was the next step.
Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong…the problem with FMS is something is wrong, but no one knows exactly what it is.
I think I could cope more with the pain if I knew where the source of that pain was and could do something to fix it, but since that is not the case, the pain torments me.
I tried NSAIDs and Tylenol in a cocktail, but that gave me stomach ulcers. Even using Tylenol for longer than 2 weeks puts one at increased risk of liver damage.
The anti-depressants did absolutely nothing for me and neither did the Savella. Lyrica worked a little to take the edge off the pain, but did not address the other FMS issues. Gabapentin works wonders on all the other issues of FMS and helps with the pain, but after 4 months on the highest dose seems to be less effective…where does one go from there?
When all the meds approved to treat do little or nothing, no diet/exercise plan comes to the rescue, the CAMs are mostly money which could be better spent elsewhere, and there are no more doctors you can see and those who will see you won’t give you the opioids…I can see why 2 of Dr. Kevorkian’s patients were FMS.
Pain is not productive and does not build character. When all you can do is hurt, there is no room to build, just damage.