Chronic pain and illness really do skew what you consider to be normal.
I'm complaining to a friend about two separate pains I've got going on right now, pains which I would categorize as "annoying," and "distracting," and she's freaking out, like, "Go to the ER!!!!" and it's like, oh, that's right. Normal people go to the ER when it hurts to breathe.
Anyway...
(Just to clarify, I'm, like, 90% sure it's costochondritis, and I'm not actually struggling to breathe. It just feels blegh. The other pain is more distracting and potentially an issue but we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.)
Been telling my (young and abled) physiotherapist for years that I'm in pain all the time and when he asks me to tell him how bad something hurts from 1-10, I really don't know how to answer that. He'll say "tell me if it hurts" and I have to say, every time "you mean... in addition to how much it always hurts?" Anyway I love the guy, but he kept asking the same questions in the same way and not understanding why it was hard for me to answer.
Then I found this graphic here on tumler dot com (I do not remember the source but please add it in comments if you know) and I showed it to him at an appointment.
He started reading from the bottom to the top, reading each "normal" level followed by the "chronic" level next to it, and at first he was laughing. When he got to about 7/4 he stopped laughing and said "okay well this is getting less entertaining and more concerning." He went completely silent for a moment after he finished, then turned to look at me with real concern in his eyes and asked me if this chart was really accurate. And when I said "Yeah, dude" and gave him a big goofy grin and a shrug, I saw something click for the first time.
Oh, this chart just made me realize my migraines are a 12.
That's... yeah, okay. Printing this out.
