Pain is Interesting.

I had a little problem with looking up at the stars recently. I found that if I do so, my left arm and hand break out in pain; intense pins and needles. Interesting that needles part. I also have a theory, well, more of a philosophy, of pain. Pain is something that hurts (you’re still with me here?) and it hurts because of an injury to the place where it hurts. It indicates damage that you need to attend to. Alternatively, an intense and very interesting sensation is something that feels very similar to pain but it doesn’t indicate on-going injury or even necessarily damage. So if there is no damage, you shouldn’t have to attend to it; it doesn’t matter. And if you are being subjected to something that is making you better, or it’s not anywhere near the location of the sensation, it can’t be pain, it’s good for you and just a very interesting sensation. My theory is shit. A few years back I came home from serious rotator cuff surgery, and due to an error in out-patient information, woke up the morning after with the nerve block completely gone and zero pain medication in my body. “Boy!” I said, “That was a long minute! Oh! It looks like I’ve got some more very long minutes queued up!” This went on for about 45 minutes until the meds kicked in. I knew that I was getting better, but I guess that I couldn’t just call my sensation “interesting” anymore. I recently had the pleasure of experiencing dry needling (intramuscular stimulation, IMS, aka: trigger point invasive therapy). Acupuncture like needles are used to “stimulate” "dense contraction knots" that are proven trigger points for deferred pain (pain you feel elsewhere). Dry needling is the use of solid acupuncture needles, the difference is, dry needling is based on scientifically tested results of measurable effects on physiology as opposed to 3,000 year old Chinese lore. Whether dry needling should be considered acupuncture or not depends on the definition of acupuncture, and it is argued that trigger points do not correspond to acupuncture points or meridians. There is no controversy about the fact that dry needling can “light you up”. This all relates to my theory of what pain is. I was more than certain that there was nothing wrong with my left hand. I was equally certain that sticking a really tiny needle into my upper arm could not possibly injure my hand. All this was abundantly clear as I bit deeply into the index finger of my other hand inorder to not scream and therefore frighten my good therapist’s other patients as he jiggled that needle around in my arm and I imagined my left hand being immersed in a pot of boiling water. Shit, that really hurt. My theory is shit. I am now wondering if the therapy is akin to the idea that if the cure is more painful than the initial pain, that’s when our minds can tell us it doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s just interesting. “Thanks Doc, I’m all better, we don’t have to do that therapy ever again.”