The Pain Scale is kinda useless
Yes, this has to do with neurodiversity. But also about general disabilities, about sexism and racism and other things.
I spend a lot of time last week in hospital, because I had a biking accident last week and was in the ER, as well as going to two check ups, the last one earlier today. And there I once again realized how useless the painscale is.
See, the entire idea of the pain scale is that you should tell doctors the pain you are in on the scale of "no pain" to "worst pain imaginable". But... the thing is that this runs into several problems:
How bad the worst pain imaginable is varies a lot depending on what the worst pain someone has ever experienced is.
People, who have to fight chronic pain, generally have a very shifted pain scale.
A lot of neurodiverse, especially a lot of autistic people, have problem with interoception - so actually telling what they and their body feel. And this can at times include pain.
And then of course there is the issue that because of a lot of people who genuinely just at the moment are experiencing their worst pain imaginable, even though for someone else it might just be a 5 or 6, makes doctors always like "Yeah, sure" when someone arrives and tells them "yeah, I am at a 9". While also saying: "So, its not that bad," when someone arrives saying "Yeah, I am at a 4 or 5?"
Just two examples for me. Earlier last year I had done something to my back and I was in so severe pain that I barely could move. But of course I did not call the ambulance, but had my roomie bring me to the hospital. So, I hobbled into the ER there, and when they asked me about my pain, I was like "8 to 9?" And they were like: "Oh, you came here on your own, it could not have been that bad."
Another one was last week. You should know, that as a teen, I had a really, really bad internal infection, with really the most horrible pain imaginable. Like, "I was screaming until they gave me morphium" bad. So, trying to focus on how my body was feeling, I came to the conclusion: "4 or 5?" And the doctor was like: "Well, than it cannot be so bad." Welp, psych. I ended up having a fracture. And the doctor just looked at me like: "... How can you still move?" And I was just: "Well, I know much worse pain."
And it should be noted. I have had several fractures during my life and... I never considered the pain of a fracture as that extreme. I do not know whether it is because of messed up interoception or something. But yeah. I move around quite fine with a fracture.
Really, I kinda feel like even for doctors it is not really the most useful evaluation tool. Because I see a lot of doctors go "Well, it is not that bad that you need treatment" if you are telling them a number smaller than 5, but as soon as you go above 7, they basically go: "Press X to doubt".
And that is without going into the problems of sexism, racism and the like. Because when a woman talks about her pain, doctors will go like: "She is just very sensitive." Meanwhile if the person is not white they will also assume other things. And of course men in general often are made to underplay their pain, to be ruff and manly.
Don't get me wrong. I know why the pain scale exists. But... I do not think it is very useful as it is right now for the reasons named above.
