Reflection About Pain

The day was February 11, 2007. I had just woken up. I went to my closet to get ready for the day, threw on some clothes and went into the kitchen. The day was dark, the atmosphere had an unusual dreariness to it. My mom was in the kitchen making breakfast for my brother, cousin and I. That is when the phone rang. Every day, every hour that phone rings. I never thought my mom ever gets off of it. My mom picks up the phone and it was like a movie, someone calls and receives horrible news and drops the phone from shock. That was this scenario. My mom could not get off the phone any quicker. She calls for everyone to hurry up and get in the car, dressed or in pajamas. I knew something was terribly wrong, did my father die from a plane crash, or did my grandma fall?

I knew that my mother needed a solid support system and optimism in the atmosphere, so that is what I gave her. My mom would struggle with making meals like she always used to, found it hard to go to my school activities, and seemed to be a completely different person because she was so physically drained. It was incredibly hard to see my mom in so much pain. I would stay home to be with her because I hated to leave her alone. My mom getting cancer made it hard for me to focus in school, sports, and I failed to be a typical teenager by not being with my friends very often.

When I was a sophomore my mother was diagnosed with cancer and as a result, I have spent most of my college career dealing emotional with the result. She is free of disease as of right now but it was a long and tumultuous journey to get there. I practically spent 2 years without a mother because she was so sick and I had to take her role. I organized family events, cooked them meals when I could, did their shopping all while going to school three hours away and having constant fear that my mother and the love of my life was going to die. That is only my personal struggle with it, not even taking into account her trauma or my fathers or brothers. It almost seems selfish to reflect on this because it was nothing compared to what she was going through. I went through stages where I was horrified and so scared and then I was angry and selfish. I wanted my mother back, I wanted her to make me dinner when I came home from college and send me care packages again. I wanted her to go shopping every weekend like she used to and spend money on things that weren’t hospital bills. I wanted to call her and hear something other than how she couldn’t get chemotherapy that week because she was so weak and was rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion. I was tired of talking to people about it and people asking if I was okay. I felt like a broken record, “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, school is

Pain: one of the most crippling emotions that the human can experience. Pain is caused in many ways. There is emotional pain and physical pain. The soldiers of the Vietnam War felt both of these types of pain during their one

When pain lasts three to six months or more, it is considered chronic pain. According to the American Geriatrics Association, more than 50 percent of seniors living at home and up to 80 percent of those in care facilities suffer from chronic pain. As a result, a great number of these seniors are not able to function properly during the day or sleep well at night. Some of the most frequent causes of chronic pain in seniors are arthritis, glaucoma, poor circulation, and nerve damage.

Five days had passed this time since anyone had heard from my mother. I remember praying to God to protect her from harm and for me to find her. The next day she showed up, but not in the way we had hoped. One morning as I was getting ready for school my sophomore year in high school, my phone rang to the voice of my stepfather. My stepfather had told me he heard a call come over the dispatch scanner at his work and my mother’s name was mentioned. The sheriff had informed my stepfather that my mother had been involved in an accident. My stepfather asked me to go to the emergency room and see what condition my mother was in because he lived a half hour away from the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital I found my mother cut out of her clothes, covered in her own urine, massive amounts of blood all over her body, and lying lifeless on life support on the table. At this point, no one knew whether my mother would be okay. My mother had bleeding on the brain as well as a tear in her shoulder, a shattered face, and a chest tube draining fluid from her lung which had collapsed. All I could do was pray! My mother’s life was in God’s hands now. Three days later she woke

What is pain? The word pain consists of many definitions. It can be both mental and physical. Losing a loved one can result in mental pain, while physical pain is usually caused by external and internal injuries. Pain differs depending on the source. There are some that even argue that pain is just a fabric of our imagination.

In 2011, my brother was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis which affected my entire family including myself. He went through many surgeries, many of which made it quite impossible for me to see him given that I was only 11 years old, and everything on that level in that hospital was contagious. Throughout, this period in my life my mother was always busy and I learned to slowly do my things on my own. Although it sounds crucial, I didn’t expect much from my mother given that she basically lived in the hospital. I fell into depression because my brother was my best friend and I couldn’t accept that he was in so much pain. I learned to overcome depression and slowly learned that life shouldn’t be taken for granted and I should believe in myself.

Before my mom sent me and my dad off to find help, she was on the phone with the roadside assistance which seemed like forever. All of a sudden we then realized the gas station wasn’t that far down the road, at least that is what we thought. We started to walk to the gas station, our foots sinking in the mud, the cold mud rises to our ankles. We immediately turn around knowing that this wasn’t the right decision. The gas station was longer than we thought, it was not even visible. Trudging back to the car we come to find my mom on speakerphone with the phone ringing. It goes straight to

Pain is a word that has been used when your body physically hurts. For example, when you stub your toe, hit your elbow, or scrape your knee. Ways we can describe physical pain is the ways our body feels. Feelings of throbbing, aching, or burning. Pain doesn’t have a time limit, it could be acute pain- meaning only a short period of time. Or chronic pain- which could last longer, up to months.

The International Association for the Study of Pain defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (Unk, 2007). Pain being described such as this allows us to see that pain is a perception, not unlike seeing or hearing. Pain is the most common reason that people seek medical attention but pain is very hard to define because it is subjective. Pain perception is the process by which a painful stimulus is relayed from the site of stimulation to the central nervous system (Freudenrich, 2008). In order to determine if pain is a perception of the mind or if it is biological we must first understand how the process of pain works.

It was a bone chilling January night; my mom received a call at about 11:15 PM, a call that changed my life forever. My Aunt June was on the other line. She was crying so hard my mother could barely understand her. Through the sobbing my mom finally understood that Brian, my cousin, had been in a horrible accident and she didn’t know how bad it was. My mother jumped out of the bed after she hung up the phone. She screamed up the stairs at my sister and me; it was a nerve shrilling scream. I could hear fear in her voice. My mom was always yelling at us growing up if we forgot to do something. She would even get us out of bed to finish something that wasn’t done completely. This particular

There are many different types of pain which can be categorised depending on how the pain is caused and how long the pain lasts. If pain results from tissue damage then it is called nociceptive pain and this includes pain from pressure applied outside of the body, like a cut or a burn, or from pressure inside the body such as a tumour. Another type of pain is neuropathic pain which is pain experienced when there is damage to

It was May 17th, 2011, it was a normal school day when my brother and I were told that my mom called to say that she was picking us up early. I was anxious, wondering why we were going home early and breaking our usual routine. When my mom came to get us, the first thing that I noticed was that she didn’t greet us with her usual smile. I was 9 years old, very observant, but not able to sense what was to come. We got into the car, when I asked my mom where we were going hoping

Fast forward a couple years to 2013, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was not and still is not an easy thing to have to deal with. This lady who was always this strong person who wouldn’t take crap from anyone has now been beaten down too sick to get out of bed. Our roles have switched now I take care of her, I lie with her for countless hours making sure she is okay just as she did when I was a kid. My mom comes to me for security and reassurance now, I have to be there for her and stay strong. I had to learn to talk to her without crying every time I looked at her. When you were a child your parent crying was one of the scariest things so I have had to do the same for her. This has ultimately pushed me to young adult hood. I had to deal with this huge emotional disaster and the woman who I usually run to for advice was the center of the