Comments on: Feeling your pain

By: Mary in Oh

Mary in Oh — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:11:47 +0000

How I have wished for that machine Neo! I have suffered decades with migraine. Now thankfully, blessedly, I no longer have them. But boy, I wanted my not so understanding husband to step in that darn machine for awhile.

By: Foxfier

Foxfier — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:29:40 +0000

Neo- my mom swears that pain is the most exhausting thing possible, because it just doesn’t stop.

“Pain” is wildly subjective– I think that I’m a total wimp, given how contractions messed me up. (Was ready to kiss the lady who made the pain stop.) Then again, some folks suffer hugely from things I just shrug off.

Glad someone came up with the “pain scale” and bless the nurses who know how to use it!– after the last c-section, I never had to go over three or so. (two is ‘annoying’)

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:12:44 +0000

Neo. Thanks. Couple of holes in the skin, swelling and….. Hardening of the flesh around hole.
Both times after working in brush in shorts.

By: gs

gs — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:43:01 +0000

1. Kudos to kolnai. 2. I agree that pain detection technology will never be perfect. I am concerned that, rather than abetting progress in the field, politics may impede it. 3. Mackey's Stanford page is here; the links look interesting. The paper is here.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:28:46 +0000

Richard Aubrey: sometimes shingles is mistaken for spider bites. Make sure it’s not shingles; if it is, there are antiviral drugs you can take to prevent complications.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:16:49 +0000

Welp, just took myself off to urgent care on account of a couple of infected spider bites. Talked to the nurse about pain. She grimaced, said she’d worked emergency in……. Must have been forty cultures, each responding to pain in their own way.
Yup. Headaches.

By: Libby

Libby — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:27:33 +0000

Interesting info, kolnai! Your concerns about where this could lead is alarming.
I also believe that in some way, one’s tolerance to pain, can be relative, based on the person’s overall exposure to discomfort.
My son son had heart surgeries at 4 days old, 6mths and 2 1/2. He could not tell us he was his pain at such a young age, and we learned with the 2nd surgery that his way of dealing with intense pain is to silently grit his teeth and glare. As a result, the PICU nurses did not keep up with his pain medication schedule – they were used to kids who indicate pain by crying, moaning, etc., so they assumed the quiet baby was OK. Also, he is generally less upset by the little scrapes and bruises he gets because on his scale of pain it rates at about a “1” compared to the “10” of recovering from surgery.

By: Curtis

Curtis — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:33:32 +0000

The Bruce Willis response to question of what he is (from the movie “The Fifth Element”):

I am a meat popsicle.

Man,
not enough
to know
he’s not enough
to stand
on his own ground.

He can,
if he wills,
believe.
Hence,
the irony:
A man who believes
is a man
who stands.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:41:18 +0000

When I take my father–91 yrs–to various docs, I always tell the doc that my dad played football in high school and college when they used leather helmets, and he was a thrice-wounded Infantry combat vet.
You have to be precise when you talk to him about “discomfort”.
Hell, I even say that, were he not a Catholic, he’d be a calvinist.
Other types of folks…not so much. Which difference gives the med pros a good deal of headache, I expect.

By: Don Carlos

Don Carlos — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:32:06 +0000

As to whether/when fetuses feel the pain of abortion is a false issue that fails in the face of the moral question: is it ever OK to kill a human for reasons of convenience?