Volume Levels

Today I thought of a way to articulate my pain threshold, and compare my “chronic” pain threshold with my “average” pain threshold. This is all incredibly subjective of course- more of an art than a science. For me “average” pain is much more manageable. I would consider a sprained ankle and a paper cut “average” pain. The terms “average” and “chronic” are a measure of quality as opposed to quantity. 

So a paper cut or sprained ankle are examples of “average” pain. That seems pretty straight forward, and it is (for me at least). The trickier concept is chronic pain, for which I have crafted an illustrative analogy:

Imagine that you are teaching a group of children. In terms of classroom management the volume of a classroom tends to follow a trend, and each phase requires a different teaching response.

Volume level 1: The children are mostly attentive, with only a few quiet whispers. You are able to teach uninterrupted. 

Volume level 2: A couple of children have outbursts that you cannot ignore. You need to stop teaching to address those outbursts, but you are able to continue teaching after that.

Volume level 3: That group of children continue to have outbursts that are disruptive enough to get other students excited as well. Now you have to drop everything and lay on your super serious teacher voice in an attempt to salvage the lesson. The children may or may not quiet down.

Volume level 4: The children do not quiet down. At this point there are two many children acting excitedly and you need to address the volume level of the room as a whole, which is rising at an alarming rate. You give up on the lesson and switch gears to damage control.

Volume level 5: The children are having a shouting match. You can’t hear yourself think, and they certainly can’t hear you call for order. At some point you admit defeat and resort to yelling “EVERYBODY QUIET DOWN” until the children get scared enough to shut up. It’s a lose/lose situation. 

For me, chronic pain is like classroom management. Throughout the day my chronic pain level fluctuates from volume levels 1-4, and on a good day I can stop it there. My functionality is largely based on the amount of energy that I am devoting to keeping the shouting match at bay. Some days I can see a volume level 5 coming on from the moment I wake up, other days it is harder to tell what will happen. It really does feel like a shouting match too-- one pain always trying to speak over another. The real trouble is that when they are all yelling it is impossible for me to address one at a time. The volume level of the room starts to rise, and from there it’s just damage control.

To be very very clear: I am not looking for pity. Or sadness, or even for help. I just want to offer some
 context to the people who know me (or others with chronic pain) so that when I say that I can’t make
 it to an event, or start to go quiet in the middle of an activity, it makes a little more sense. Because
 unless you know me incredibly well you would probably never guess that my volume level is at a four
 on average. In fact, I go out of my way not to divulge that information. Why? That’s for a different blog
 post. Suffice it to say: I struggle every day to maintain control of my body and I don’t need to exert
 energy moderating people’s reactions to that fact. It is what it is.