by Jovian Wong

Created on: April 23, 2008

He held a rectangular piece of paper up to my face. On it, there was a scale range of one to ten.
"Describe the pain score for me," he said with a firm voice. "One being painless and ten being extremely painful."
I wished there was a 100. I wished he could hold fifty cards up so I could smack him on his head and tell him to "look at my face!"
"10" I said agitatedly. I didn't want to have to tell him I was suffering from pain. My contorted visage conveyed the message, yet, he was unconvinced.

Acute pain and chronic pain are two different types of pain. Remember how your mother used to apply a band aid, kiss it, and tell you that everything would be all right? Usually, in the case of acute pain patients, scars or wounds would be noticeable through X-rays or other series of tests. For chronic patients, on the other hand, it may not have been that easy.
"Where's the pain?" I remember what the psychiatrist said. She scrutinized my facial expression and immediately deduced, "it's all in your mind." An answer easily said, and an answer easily rejected.

"God help you, Jovian," that was what my mum muffled on the way home from the hospital. Doctor Stevens was the eleventh doctor I had visited over the period of two years. No wonder my mother was being suspicious of me and my pain.

As a sufferer of a rare chronic pain for five years, I know the one thing that is inevitable for most chronic patients, and that would be the numerous bills you have to pay due to the number of doctors you visit. However, that is in the least of many of our worries. What irks many people would be the incredible tale of pain doctors think we are making up. We aren't equipped with the medical expertise to know what we're dealing with. Doctors, then again, do, and we expect them to heal us, not ignore us. Alas, most of them do not truly understand the extent of the pain we are going through in our lives - both mentally and physically.

Chronic pain, should be, and it has been classified as a medical issue in itself, not only for the fact that it heavily affects a person's life by rendering daily activities a living nightmare, but it also takes a negative toll on a person's mental health. It basically doubles the attacks on a person's life. A person who sprains his or her ankle would feel pain, and what would doctors do? The first thing that comes to their mind would be the need to alleviate the pain. See how pain is a subject of every injury? Maybe chronic pain - or the subject of pain alone - is poorly

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