As far as physical pain goes, I have experienced very little in my life. I have never had any surgery, a broken bone or spent a night in a hospital. So it truly shocked me recently after I had been suffering severe knee pain for several weeks for no apparent reason, to learn that x-rays show that my left knee has been damaged by osteoarthritis. I thought there would be a gradual onset of something like this, with warnings leading up to it. Neither of my parents had arthritis. I never expected arthritis to make an appearance until much later in life, if at all.
It’s hard to understand how I can go overnight from totally fine to being in agony. I have what’s called an “effusion,” also known as water on the knee surrounding the damaged joint. Even though I have gradually gained weight over the years, no doctor had ever discussed the possibility with me, and even though all the women in my family carry extra pounds, none have complained of arthritis. After I left the doctor’s office, I felt like my body had betrayed me and like I had aged 100 years overnight!
When I told my friend Sonya about my diagnosis, she said, “Do you know how lucky you are? So many people have lived with long-term pain so much of their lives.”
She got me to thinking about trying to look at this with a different perspective.
We don’t like to think of it this way, but pain is essential. For those of us with healthy nervous systems, millions of pain sensors dot the surface of the skin, scattered not randomly, but in precise accord with the body’s needs. The lack of pain sensation leads people to do harmful things, such as reaching directly onto a hot stove to pick something up. Someone with advanced diabetes can’t feel it when a piece of glass pierces the skin of the foot, which can lead to dangerous infection and even loss of limbs.
I have learned that the sensation of pain ties in with an elaborate network of sensors that report information about pressure, touch, heat and cold. Nerve cells change their perception of pain in order to meet the needs of the body. They “turn up the volume,” amplifying bumps and scrapes that would normally go unreported. For instance, due to inflammation, an infected finger may become 10 times more sensitive to pain. We have several hundred million sensors that amazingly function maintenance free throughout our lifetime.
Some examples:
Tip of tongue: sensitive to 2 grams of pressure
Fingers: sensitive to 3 grams of pressure
Back of hand: sensitive to 100 grams
Sole of foot: sensitive to 250 grams of pressure
Cornea: .2 grams of pressure produces painful sensation
Dr. Paul Brand was a pioneer in the research of Hansen’s Disease, also known as leprosy. Brand discovered that the loss of limbs and the deformities suffered by his patients were due to the loss of the ability to feel pain. With treatment and care, he showed that victims of the disease could go indefinitely without such deformities.
He headed a multi-million dollar project whose goal was to design an artificial pain system to help people with diseases like Hansen’s and diabetes who are in danger of losing fingers, toes and entire limbs simply because they can’t feel pain.
Researchers tried using blinking lights as a signal to patients, letting them know when they were in danger of injuring their fingers or hand, but the patients too easily ignored them. So researchers tried sending an audible signal through a hearing aid that would buzz when an artificial nerve, a pressure-sensitive transducer that could be worn on the finger like a glove, signaled when tissue was in danger. They found that when a patient with a damaged hand was turning a screwdriver too hard and the loud warning signal went off, the patient would simply override it and turn the screwdriver anyway.
Brand found that people had to be forced to respond—not just alerted to the danger. People who could not feel pain could not be persuaded to trust the artificial sensors.
“God designed the human body so that it is able to survive because of pain,” Paul Brand wrote. This amazing system of nerves God has given me enables me to feel the pain that gets my attention; the pain lets me know that something is wrong; pain forces me to refrain from activities that might further injure me and pain demands the attention and care that is crucial to how I am going to learn to live with this injury.
If you have have any ideas to contribute on what best enables you to live well and cope with ongoing pain, please email me at ka********@gm***.com so we can share your ideas with other readers.
