3188 Pain Redux

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Explanations are interpreted at the level and understanding of the listener, not the speaker.

--------------------------------------------

The above quote is, as usual, random, but this is one case where it applies to the post it heads.

-------------------------------

I confessed to Daughter yesterday that I had raised a bit of a stink in the Grandparents' class Monday evening, over the nurse's overuse of the word "pain". Daughter smirked. That particular nurse teaches the Lamaze classes, AND the Cesarean classes.

Daughter says she pretty much agrees with me that setting up for expectation of pain can cause pain, for a variety of reasons, but that it goes further than that. She said that she and I are a bit different from the average American in that we are more European and Asian in our views of the relationship of mind and body, and the relative roles of internal and external intervention, and therefore we won't necessarily understand the average American's response, and they won't understand ours.

Like when she or I have a headache, our first response is to figure out why we have the headache, and then remove or fix that stimulus. Most Americans' first or only response is to take aspirin.

She and I think a fever is a good thing, it's the body's way of making itself inhospitable to an invader, and she and I let it do its work (unless and until it gets too high). The average American immediately tries to reduce the fever, as if the fever itself is a bad thing, then relies on antibiotics to do the fever's work (which then upsets the natural good-bug/bad-bug balance in the gut, necessitating further intervention).

She and I look inwardly for balance and healing. Most Americans look outwardly, they don't trust their bodies, as if their bodies don't know what to do and the cure has to come from outside.

Yes, there are always times when outward intervention is absolutely necessary, especially when the damage has originated from the outside, or when the body's natural defenses are damaged or not sufficient, or the body doesn't recognize the threat, or either doesn't react or overreacts. The problem is that the average American has been conditioned to believe that outward intervention is always the best and only way.

A tiny example: Does a little cut on your hand always require the application of an antibiotic cream?** If so, you are probably an average American.

--------------------------------

**(That was one thing that Jay and I didn't agree on. He always put antibiotic cream on every cut, even tiny paper cuts. And yet it was Jay the chemist who explained to me that those creams, and alcohol, and most other things people use on cuts, kill the living body cells at the edges and inside the cut in addition to any bacteria in the area.)
.