The cost of suffering, why we'll endure pain for the right price

Being in A & E has its opportunities. Lots of strange stuff happens. People are random and do things that makes no sense.

- Dr Ali A Smith

You don’t have to wait all that long before someone stabs themselves. Reasonable person who did something stupid. That opportunity presented itself the other day and I asked them something that always intrigues me. When you stabbed yourself, did you get a stabbing pain?

The answer was gratifying. No. It did not feel like a stabbing pain. It wasn't a sharp pain either. It was more like an intense pain and then dull pain. Funny thing that. Stabbing doesn’t feel like stabbing. But then I already know that burning does not cause a burning pain. I have burnt myself before and it was more stinging than burning. Then throbbing.

Pain is an experience. It’s something we feel. It’s not fixed. We can’t even find words that describe it accurately. It would make sense if we all had an agreement about pain. If we had a standard set of injuries and we compared the pain to that.

Perhaps, we could all put a needle into our thigh by 1cm and then use that. More or less painful.

It's caused Doctors a lot of problems when assessing patients.