So, Pain is the is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli, or it is the sensation of discomfort that can be experienced in any part of the human body. The International Association for the Study of Pain’s widely used definition defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”; however, due to it being a complex, subjective phenomenon, defining pain has been a challenge.
That is why using the correct word to describe the pain can be quite a task, it is important to describe what the pain is like after a person has experienced it. Often people who are old or are not native English speakers find it difficult to explain their pain to English speaking doctor whilst they are experiencing the pain on any part of their body. Some certain words are ascribed to define the pain, these words paint a picture in the doctor’s mind so they are able to exactly discern what their patients are actually feeling.
These words include; tingling, trauma, prickle, anguish, unbearable, excruciating, hurtful, discomfort. agony, suffering, distress, tormenting, pain itself, and a whole array of many different words which can be of great help when describing how bad of a pain you are in. These words have a stigma associated with them that make them the perfect words when describing certain types of pain; also the words themselves are synonymous with ‘pain’ itself.
So, here is a scenario, you have been suffering from pain that you got when you dislocated your shoulder when you were on your bike and rammed into a car, the pain in your shoulder is intense and does not cease to grow, rather it intensifies so you can use the word traumatizing when describing such kinds of pain. Other time you were just moving about in the room when you stub your toe into the foot of a table that kind of pain is not that unbearable, so you can use the word tingling to describe the sensation of that pain.
So, you were just sitting about doing nothing or were just watching the tv when suddenly you started to have a migraine, that kind of pain is generally unrelenting so you could use the words like agonizing or excruciating, to go with when describing that kind of pain. Generally describing your pains to your doctor you could use the words like “ I feel discomfort ever since I banged my knee into the sofa or stuff like that. The pain becomes unbearable especially when a woman is in labor, when you slip a disk when you get a fracture and stuff in which the body goes through some really hurtful ordeal. So, describing the pain properly is only achieved when you use certain words that help the doctor discern, what magnitude of pain it is and how much does it hurt, it is helpful for doctor. Using wrong words with the wrong kind of pain is misleading, for example, when you stub your toe accidentally into something, words like excruciating or agonizing would not do the job of describing the pain properly, unless of course, you broke your bone in your toe on the impact.