A theory of relativity or: drago dormiens nunquam titillandus.

On the subject of pain...
(In case this is beginning to bore you, I completely and totally couldn't agree more.)
There's a couple of insights I gained during the last weeks with regard to pain, so let's see if my doped, muddled brain can get them straight:

• Pain is relative. You might get into the habit of rating it on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the worst pain imaginable, just in case someone, like your dentist, asks you to describe it. Doctors seem to think that assigning a number to a feeling gives the whole thing objectivity. The problem is, however, you might go around for a week or two rating your pain with an "8 out of 10" because you decided for yourself that a "5" would be the point when the pain is too strong to be ignored, let alone to fall asleep and that right now you are way beyond that point, you simply can't imagine it getting much worse and you are definitely taking a pain killer (in fact, should have taken it an hour ago, damn it!) because otherwise you might bang your head against the wall. But see, there's the hitch. You can't imagine it getting much worse. Until you are taught otherwise. Until you realize what a sissy apparently you have been before to go round dealing out "8's out of ten" like there's no tomorrow. That yesterdays "8" today would barely qualify for a "5".
  
• So pain is highly subjective. If I can't even trust my own frame of reference to be of any value, I can hardly expect anyone else to be able to understand what and how I feel. Their frame of reference is bound to be based upon totally different experiences.
  
• Which means pain makes you lonely. There's nobody to deal with it for you. There's just you. You might even resort to methods you have always looked down upon, like visualizing the pain in a certain way in order to deal with it mentally. (And it even worked for a couple of days. I honestly felt the pain ease off a little when I pictured this certain image I had dreamt about. But that was before I had to readjust my 1-10 scale.)
  
• So pain makes you almost certainly go mental. Or at least very, very self-centred. Until you hear about your good friend's health drama that suddenly got into full swing while you looked the other way for only an instance. That horrible, nightmare-inducing life-and-death situation of hospitals and surgery and waiting for test results and praying and more waiting. Which gives you all the time in the world to berate yourself for being so selfish. That is, up to the point when you own pain takes up all your attention again. It's very hard to concentrate on someone else's drama when your head wants to burst. But I'm still learning.
  
• So, I guess, at the end of the day pain teaches humility. In a good and in a bad way. The good way is when the pain eases off (either with or, even more magically, without the aid of pain killers). That moment when you feel it beginning to go away. That relief, that gratitude. The bad way is when the pain does not go away at all and you realize that you are completely at the mercy of its whims and moods, or at the mercy of some doctor or other to find a way to make it stop, that you have no control whatsoever over your own body and mind. Rather disconcerting that. (pause) So, um, I'm getting the feeling I should probably conclude on a slightly happier note.
• Pain can stop. Yes, it's been heard of. And I'm pretty sure this one will, too. Any day now.