Prying on Pain

by Arnold De Villa
March 1, 2012
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. An estimated 76.5 million reported having suffered some pain that lasted at least an entire day. About 25.5 million claimed that the intensity of their pain disabled them from having normal daily functions. If this is not enough, the cost of pain is staggering: $61.2 billion dollars lost annually because of absenteeism, not mentioning a $100 billion dollars attributed to medical costs.
For the past few weeks that I worked my clinicals in a hospital by Elk Grove Village, the most common questionI heard almost every week has always been about pain. Together with the other members of the health care team, the question has been a routinary protocol. “In a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain today? Have you taken your pain medications lately? Do you want more Tylenol? ” And then we move on to the next room, leaving the patient with a pill and a glass of water while a sense of uneasiness pervades the medical sanctuary as it labors hard to alleviate the pangs of human misery.
Why pain? The reality of this misery is a mystery not only to our physiology but also to our sanity. The more we ask, the less we know. The less we know, the more we want to know. In the second round of query, the agony is increased, the answers decrease. And we are left with nothing else but a faint echo of a pain that soon comes back screaming louder than ever; more demeaning, more perplexing, and utterly evil.
A Pharmacology instructor told us last summer that “pain is subjective”, that we cannot discredit what a person feels. And in so doing, we can only offer a palliative, a patch that could console the discomfort of that sensation, regardless of what we think. After all, pain is only a secondary effect, an aftermath from a primary etiology; above and beyond mere symptoms, it is a sign that does not seek cure.
Pain is subjective. And because it is subjective it is relative. And because it is relative, it varies according to human experience. We are not more or less painful than our neighbors because we are deprived of an absolute basis for an exact comparison. We do not have the tools for an accurate benchmark. Yet despite these differences and lack of standards, we can perhaps assume that no normal human being would open heartedly seek for pain or willingly accept it as an integral part of our quest for happiness. We just don’t.
So then perhaps I can only offer a perspective, an obstinate optimism that has chronically marked my thoughts. Pain is the absence of a perfect and total well-being. Our corruptible conditions as corruptible beings impede us from having an intermittent experience of a complete well-being. We do not only feel pain. We own pain. We have pain. Pain is in us. Although it is there, it is actually not there, because it is a sheer reflection of an absence; the absence of total health, the absence of a perfect condition. So as this confusing logic would lead us, the evident conclusion would then be through the premise that pain is merely a reminder that something is not there, that we are wanting of something better, that we are in need of something more.
Are we in pain? Of course. Our ageing cells are giving way to its own destruction. The socio-economic structure of our habitat has not completely allowed us to grab our dreams as we always thought they would be. We failed and we obstinately remember our failures. We wept and we have not yet dried our tears. We died and we still cling to our death. Pain lingers. Pain remains.
And so our human life becomes a misery, a patch work of excruciating events that caused the disappearance and annihilation of cultures, circumstances that lead to the unexplained loss of lives and talents, the bitterness of tears, and the aches of the heart. But if I can conclude that pain is simply a reminder of something that is not there, then what is there?
I pried on pain. It barked and expelled the flatulence of a fetid world. When the air clears, when the nauseating reality of our misery is disclosed to its brim, when the obnoxious insufficiency of our thoughts settles in peace, something somehow emerges from the rubbles of our putrid condition – hope. Where does it come from?
Idk (translation: I don’t know) …it just popped out. I hope it is not a subliminal effect from the countless political campaigns that mark this era. I hope it is not a mere vibration from previous promises that marketed a government office. And I hope that is not a mere literary gizmo I am using for lack of a better rhetoric. I hope.
Really, does hope emerge from nowhere like the sun that escapes from stormy clouds? Does it really come to us like a rainbow amidst thunder and lightning? Is it one of nature’s “Tylenol”, a merciful ploy from a merciful God? I hope.
When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus had his revenge by presenting Pandora to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus.Besides Pandora, he was also given a beautiful container which came with a mandate that it should not be openedat all. However, pushed by a God-given curiosity, Pandora disobeyed and opened the box. All the evil that it contained escaped and spread all over the earth. She hurriedly tried to seal the container, but it was too late. The whole contents had already escaped, except for one thing that remained at the bottom – Hope.
Pain is like the emptiness of Pandora’s Box, spreading the nemesis of anger because of a mythic evil. Yet at the bottom of that anger is the essence of a gift, the mark of generosity, the emblem of a divine nature. If Hope is not from Someone Good, it will be hard to express, we will never understand it or much less conceive its reality. We might truly never know how it began or how it is made. Or can we? So what is hope?