PAIN LEVEL SEVEN

Wisdom from Josh, Part 4

I’d been talking with Josh for a while when the nurse walked in and asked him what his pain level was. He glanced up at her and said with utter calm and nonchalance, “Seven.”

Seven.

As if he were telling her the time Ellen would be on television. As if pain level seven was as routine as brushing his teeth.

My stomach dropped upon learning he’d been so uncomfortable while we’d been visiting. How could I not have known?

If you’re not familiar with the pain chart, it looks something like this:

You can see what pain level seven connotes. I suppose the diagram was developed so we’d have a common language to understand pain—from paper cut to heart attack and beyond—no matter our age, language or experience.

But seeing Josh so calmly be in so much pain got to me.

“What would have been a nine before is now a seven,” he told me. He also shared matter-of-factly that he has no moment that’s pain-free, or even with lessened pain. Instead, he has slightly more manageable pain and really distracting, uncomfortable pain.

Let that sink in.

His leg isn’t there, but it still hurts him at all times. The nerves that sense the pain he suffered from the motorcycle accident still fire. Constantly.

Pain is unseen but very, very real and physical. In Josh’s case, pain takes on an even more unseen level, since he’s missing the lower portion of his leg, but his foot and shin hurt as if the motorcycle is right now crushing his leg. As if his bones are being broken. Constantly.

He showed me how he could move his (no longer there) ankle, lift up his (no longer there) toe, and straighten his (no longer there) knee.

His body still thinks he has his leg, and he’s suffering for it.

I don’t pretend to understand all about pain. My grandfather was a quadriplegic for about the last decade of his life. He slipped getting out of a spa and hit the back of his neck. The pain management for him was a very real, very palpable thing that I experienced from the outside every time I saw him. He eventually had a morphine pump installed. It hurts to see another hurt, especially one who is close to us.

Looking outward at another’s pain made me wonder—how much pain are we all in that we hide? I’ve written before about mental illness and how it’s unseen, but now I’m thinking all suffering is hidden deep down so we never show it to others. It can be our new normal.

Josh’s comment made me think how true the meme is that says to be kind to others because we don’t know what they’ve been through.

I’d previously thought that it would take deep excavation to get to that point where the pain is brought to the surface.

But now I think pain might be barely beneath our paper-thin skin. It might take only one question to open it up:

How are you doing—for real?

PS Here’s Josh and Grace today. Please check out his instagram at www.instagram.com/jdreed87