Pain Chart

I hate the following question, "How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1-10." I just find the whole concept of ranking pain to be a very inaccurate process.

For instance there is no norming on what each level of pain means ("norming" is just teacher talk for standardization). I for one believe that level 1 is reserved for things like paper cuts and scratches, while level 10 is saved for physical torture. With this in mind, when I am having a very bad pain day I would self describe myself as a 4.

Saying you are having level 4 pain though gets no response from a doctor or nurse...ever! DawnMarie says that I should raise my number to a 6 or 7 but I don't like artificially inflating the scale. The reason why is that some day I might be having level 7 pain and I don't want to receive the same treatment I got for what was really level 4 pain. Psychotic I know!

So here is my idea, a machine that helps you rate the level of your pain. Adults, here is how your kid is going to become a famous billionaire. What we need is a device that gauges your pain through the monitoring of muscle or neural response. I think a good name for the machine would be the "now we don't have to ask what your pain level is any more like a bunch of morons", but perhaps that's a little to long.