How do people learn how to describe pain or discomfort? At what point does a person learn to distinguish between using "I have a stomachache" and "my stomach hurts"? Is there an actual difference between the two? Does everyone differentiate them the same way? What exactly is the difference between throbbing, pulsating, piercing, stabbing, sharp, and nagging pain? It's one thing to have to describe common symptoms, but what about when you're trying to describe something completely foreign? Or better yet, what happens when you don't speak the same language? What then? It seems like so much of a doctor's diagnosis depends on a person's ability to articulate what they're feeling, but as I've learned in the few English courses I've taken, the same words strung together can have many different interpretations. It seems funny to me that despite all of our medical technology, a doctor's best starting point depends almost entirely on something as old as time - verbal communication. Until our doctors are equipped with Star Trek tricorders, I guess I'd better study up on my adjectives.
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3 comments:
TRICORDERS!!! We need transporters too! The Star Trek world is the best!!!!
There is a picture chart, no? Of the faces where the only variable is the mouth in a continuum of happiness to sadness? I think they use that for children and those who are adjective-deficient.
There is, and there's also an accompanying number scale. I guess that's one way to go about it, but pain's so subjective that I don't know how accurate of a descriptor it is - better than nothing, I suppose.
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