What Does Chronic Pain Feel Like?

Dear Humans Unfamiliar With Chronic Pain,

What part of yourself do you wish strangers could see? For me, it’s the invisible collection I carry everywhere from chronic pain. The collection began with a shift, an accident while working with a student, defined using medical terms “lumbar disc herniations” and “radiculopathy.” While these words explain the pain, they do not describe the resulting fluctuations between discomfort and agony. Chronic pain remains an abstract, fuzzy concept. So I will attempt to describe the experience using objects and sensations you either know or can imagine.

Two days after the injury, I went to a museum. The herniated discs felt like pebbles lodged in my lower back. I shifted and stretched, attempting to shake them out the way I would a rock in my shoe. At first uncomfortable but now, forty-eight hours later, becoming maddening, I tried to place my focus on the art. I took a step towards the next painting, stifling a scream as the blowtorch appeared, igniting a nerve snaking through my hip.

Almost five years later, after many failed conservative treatments, I’m finally scheduled for a surgery that will hopefully improve the pain. Every morning, I sit up in bed and gravity starts an hourglass. When the timer ends my brain tries to push, summoning adrenaline that masks the sensation of hardening sand in my lower back. I never thought at thirty-three that I would need to spend most of my days horizontal. My body reminds me of my reality every time I return from a trip to the grocery store and collapse on the floor, bones crackling as the sand softens and shifts back into place.

On some mornings, it feels like screws dropped into my back during slumber. When I wake up, I gurgle through involuntary groans as I use my limited energy to push my torso up with my arms. A giant claps his foot down on my spine as I push myself to standing. He chuckles at my meek efforts. On those days, when I stand in the kitchen to toast bread for an easy meal, a screwdriver twists the metal into place. I tremble with pain and exhaustion and swallow the saliva building from the back of my throat because vomiting only shakes the screws and increases the giant’s fury.

Sometimes, with the right combination of sensations, I lose consciousness from pain. I fainted and fell down my stairs while taking out the trash once. Another time, I collapsed on a subway platform, backing away when the vertigo started to avoid falling onto the tracks.

This summer, I spent a few Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy sessions talking to my therapist about road rage. The combination of fear, anxiety, and chronic pain meant that when a person cut me off or changed lanes without signaling, I got disproportionately angry. One day, my therapist kindly reminded me that driving did not make me a mind reader. Yes, people might be rude drivers, but they also might have an emergency, or simply be in a rush. I’d never know for certain either way, but my anxiety around driving quelled dramatically when I decided to try giving other drivers the benefit of the doubt.

Similarly, I know you cannot see my invisible collection of pebbles and screws when you look at me. Even when I’ve had to wear a back brace, people have mistaken the device for a waist trainer. But if you see me using accessible seating or walking to the front of a line, what if you try assuming that I am a human with an invisible illness who requires an accommodation? Kindnesses that ease the presence of the chronic pain collection often prompt tears of gratitude and are not forgotten.

With Love, 

Sofia