From: Arthur.Saus@p160.f72.n376.z1.fidonet.org (Arthur Saus)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Pain
Date: 7 Apr 92 17:53:10 GMT
Reply-To: Arthur.Saus@p160.f72.n376.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:376/72.160 - Windows of the Worl, Columbia SC

Index Number: 20838

[This is from the Chronic Pain Conference]

> I agree with you, Arthur.  However, in my case, although
> "they" really can't pinpoint the cause of my chronic pain,
> they have guesses...scar tissue rates right up there on the
> list, followed by "possible" pressure from a disk, the newly
> diagnosed sacroiliac joint dysfunction and coccyx pain, etc.
> I mean, isn't there always "something" causing the pain?  If
> not, then why is the pain there?  (Just food for thought,
> although I'd love it if somebody had an answer.)

I guess the answer is yes and no... although "something" is causing
pain, that "something" is not necessarily located at the part of
the body where pain is experienced, although it usually is.  This
gets back to the definition of acute recurring pain vs. chronic
pain I used in my prior message to you.  If there is something that
can be demonstrated to be present somewhere in the body that is a
continuing source of irritation, this can be considered to be an
acute recurrant pain rather than a chronic pain, regardless of the
length of time it has been present.

Sometimes, there is an injury to some part of the body that is the
original source of the pain, but a chronic pain problem continues
even long after that body part has completely healed. This is the
pain for which we do not have a good explanation... currently, our
best understanding is that for some unknown reason, some part of
the brain defies the normal control mechanisms and "goes
freelance", generating a message that pain exists in a particular
part of the body that is not actually diseased at that time. This
is chronic pain, and since it exists only within the brain itself,
it is extremely difficult to treat while causing devistating pain
problems for the patient.

I'm not sure if this is really an answer to your question of why
the pain is there, but just our best understanding presently.

Pain is a real problem because it is a subjective experience, not
something that can easily be measured objectively. An explanation I
used to use with students was to compare it to beauty. We can
describe how an object (such as a flower) is shaped, it's color,
and it's texture. We can tell you how the light is reflected off
that object, how it enters the eye and is focused on the retina, as
well as the neurological pathways by which that image travels from
the eye to the brain and the paths within the brain where that
information is sent, but we can't tell you how it becomes
beautiful.  That is your subjective determination since "beauty is
in the eye of the beholder".  Your appreciation of pain is much the
same way as your appreciation of beauty.  We can tell you how a
specific stimulus causes certain local chemical changes and how
these changes affect nerves to encode a noxious stimulus that is
transmitted to the central nervous system.  We can tell you the
pathways these stimuli travel through the peripheral nervous
system, into the spinal cord, then into the brain, and the paths
within the brain where these messages are distributed, but we can't
tell you how it becomes painful for you.  The exact same stimulus
applied to someone else may not be appreciated as painful due to
the subjective nature of pain.

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