Pain is Relative
It was very early morning, maybe 5:00 a.m. and there I sat in the bahnhof in Wiesbaden, Germany with tears streaming down my face as I consoled my hysterical five year old daughter. A few people walked past, no doubt, wondering why we were crying. We were leaving for Paris in a short while and my daughter had just left her backpack on the bus we rode to the train station. She had books, money and art supplies in that backpack, but we didn’t much care about those things. It was her beloved Winnie the Pooh that had us grieving.
When she was about 18 months old, she became obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. It was me who got her into Pooh. He was MY favorite Disney character when I was little and I carried around a little Pooh bear. When the original film was re-released I jumped at the chance to introduce my baby to Pooh and his little group of friends. She watched that movie several times a day for nearly a year, had a Pooh birthday party and we got her that stuffed Pooh Bear for her 2nd birthday. She took him everywhere and had left him a few places along the way. We were always able to track him down, but this time it seemed hopeless. I’m 100% positive that my pain at that point was every bit as intense, maybe more so, as hers.
A few months ago, a facebook post about pain was circulating and it really stuck with me. It asked what the worst pain you ever felt was. I immediately began thinking about physical pain, trying to quantify the different physical pains I have felt. But then it hit me; the worst pain I have ever felt wasn’t walking on my broken femur and tibia both unstable while unable to put any weight on my other leg. It was watching my father take his last breath. It was watching my mother in agonizing pain, tell her only remaining brother, over the phone, that she was ready to die. It has been every time I have seen my children hurting emotionally and couldn’t do a thing to help them. It was hearing someone that I love with every ounce of my being say that she had contemplated suicide.
At a recent doctor appointment, the doctor asked me to rate my hip pain on a scale of 1 to 10. My first thought was, damn, I hate these stupid pain scales. I replied “six or seven.” Bryan chimed in, saying, “You will never hear her say 10.” He is right. No matter how bad a physical pain is, it cannot touch how I feel watching someone I love hurt. If I could keep my children from feeling pain, I’d take on limitless physical pain. But that’s not how it works.
As I wrote in a previous post, I was recently diagnosed with bilateral hip dysplasia. Because hip dysplasia is often genetic, I asked my doctors if my kids should get checked out. They all said it was a good idea, so when my daughter came home from vet school for a week, I scheduled her an appointment. She was not happy with me, but went along, if only to make me happy. While we waited in the room for the doctor to come in, her x-rays were pulled up on the computer. With my complete ignorance on reading x-rays, I thought they looked good. She is in her third year of vet school and has studied dysplasia in dogs and has taken a radiology course. She saw the signs before the doctor even walked in the room. He came in and I sat and watched my adult child hear that, not only does she have dysplasia, but hers is more severe than mine.
Did you see Father of the Bride? The one with Steve Martin? Remember that scene when they are at dinner after the daughter got back from her trip and she says, “I met a man in Paris and we’re getting married”? Steve Martin sees his daughter as a little girl saying these things. I sat in that exam room listening to my four year old, with the cutest lisp, by the way, discuss her condition with the doctor. It was absolutely surreal to me. It took me right back to that train station and losing Pooh. Pain is relative.
My daughter got her Winnie the Pooh back! Yes, thanks to my good friend, Susan, and the kindness of a stranger, he was waiting for us when we returned with a new one, we bought at the Disney store in Paris. (We named the new one Le Pooh.) I had called Susan from the train and asked her to check the lost and found at the bus station and the backpack was there with all of its original contents.
I know my daughter is scared of what might come with her hip dysplasia, but the good news is that she knows before any damage is done and she has options for how to deal with it. Knowledge is power. I have yet to convince my son that knowing now is better than rolling the dice, but he has goals he doesn’t want to even consider not reaching. I get that. I wouldn’t give up a single run I went on, even though I know all that running destroyed my hip. Adventure may hurt, but monotony will kill you.
We all go through pain, both emotional and physical. It cannot be avoided and just like my pains are relative, so is the pain everyone feels. What destroys one person may not be your worst pain. That does NOT make their pain any less legitimate or severe. There is a lesson for all of us in this truth. Every person is unique. Every person experiences pain with a different frame of reference. We cannot spend even a moment comparing ourselves to others. We should not minimize our own nor anyone else’s pain. We should be more considerate of everyone we come into contact with because we have not a single clue what they are feeling or going through. What you see on the outside is not necessarily what is happening on the inside. Even when we share a common experience, it is not the same. We might be able to relate or imagine, but we cannot know.
