Pain

EL was given a questionnaire at the breast center:

What does your pain feel like?
Circle response: sharp dull burning aching throbbing tender numb stabbing gnawing shooting exhausting penetrating miserable unbearable continuous occasional



L* circled sharp burning throbbing numb stabbing shooting occasional

After filling out her questionaire, L* began talking about the pain sensations she’s been feeling.

She is resisting the idea that her pain is "phantom" pain, as described by some literature on mastectomy. The way we learn about this idea of "phantom pain" is usually from television or fiction, where they talk about someone having a leg amputated, and then afterwards, feeling pain in that leg. It’s like the ghost of the leg.

That’s not what how L* describes it. We’re calling it “poltergeist pain,” because instead of there being a ghost in a specific location behaving a specific way, it’s like the poltergeist is in the house, causing random acts of havoc.

So there’ll be a non-specific pain: L* feels it but can’t locate it.

Or, she has had a distinct sensation of an open, festering sore on each side of her back. She asks me, repeatedly, to see if anything is there. But, nothing is there. Her pain is causing some kind of mixed message and it is oddly disconcerting.

More often, she feels something like electrical impulses jumping along one particular thread of a muscle or tendon. Or, something inside her grabbing onto a ligament and squeezing it hard and tight until it begins to burn.

Nurse D tells us that what she is describing is “nerve” pain. I don’t know if this is right, but I imagine it like the body is a whole network (cyberspace), and after the surgery there’s no communication from a former hub, so all the rest of the net is sending out signals to see if they can establish contact.

Another thing during the follow up visit: L* was telling Nurse D. that she has a lot of energy: she wants to get up and be doing things. Nurse D. said this is actually because of the pain: the body is trying to move away from the pain, so it’s telling L* let’s get up and go!