Random Thought of the Day--Pain Tolerance

Yesterday my pinball machine of a brain hit on the topic of pain tolerance. I know a lot of people with a low pain threshold. I knew a girl years ago with a low tolerance for pain. When she was giving birth to her first baby, she actually started to get up from the delivery room bed because she was "done."  Of course, giving birth is not a low-pain activity for anyone.  I have a high threshold for pain, but I had a couple complications and I screamed at least once during delivery.  Which brings me to my point.

I think a lot of people assume that if someone has a high tolerance for pain, it means that they don't feel pain like most others. That is a ridiculous notion!  While there are people who do not feel pain (something rare and dangerous), most of us do.  The phrases "high tolerance" and "low tolerance" are exactly that.  Some people can feel the same pain, but their level of withstanding that pain is different.  I do have a high pain threshold, but if you hit me with a hammer, it is still going to hurt!

It may sound strange, but if I know the source of my pain, I can tolerate it better.  In 1984 I started having horrible pains and ended up in the hospital. For four days they did not know what was wrong with me.  In those four days, I had roughly 30 pain-killer shots. As soon as they found out that it was an ovarian cyst, my level of pain dropped drastically because it was no longer unknown.  Of course, I did have surgery to remove it, as I was not willing to put up with the pain just because I knew what it was!

Another thing that helps me with pain tolerance, when I am going through things like kidney stones, is knowing that as bad as I hurt, someone out there is in worse pain than I am, and is possibly dying. That doesn't make me feel good about being in pain, but it helps me focus on others and to pray for them as I pray for my pain to stop.

A little silliness to end with--I have always said that you can cut my arm off and it wouldn't hurt that much, but give me a paper cut and it hurts like the dickens!