Your pain experience is unique and personal

Pain is a poorly understood phenomenon.  Pain has been treated and studied for so long, and Western medicine has made extraordinary advances in so many areas,  but we still have only a fundamental understanding of pain's mechanism.  Pain is a complex mechanism that involves physiology, spirituality, emotions, and perceptions.  As in all health issues, it involves the mind/body connection.  When people are in pain it is a completely subjective and personal experience.  Pain makes people feel emotionally out of control, which increases anxiety levels and increases the intensity of the pain experience.  That is why lavendar aromatherapy decreases the perception of pain; lavendar is a calming herb.  When I was working with an Interventional Radiology Department I observed that women experienced more pain than men when a chemotherapy port was placed in the upper chest.  When I presented that information to the port placement team it was decided to give women a prescription for pain medication before they were discharged back home.  In my follow up calls women reported they didn't fill the analgesic prescription, they still had pain, but they tolerated that pain better because they knew they were in control and could opt to fill the analgesic prescription if they wished. I have also observed from my own experience that the more pain medication I use the more I seem to have a rebound increase in pain.  Therefore I use pain medication as judiciously as possible.  That rebound pain experience