My perception from the reading the chapter is that pain is described in many ways. First, pain is considered to be a suffering or distress due to injury, illness, disease, etc. Secondly, pain is a distressing sensation in a particular part of the body such as: Back pain, arthritis, cancer, nerve damage, etc. Pain can also be characterized as mental or emotional suffering, physical pain to; hurt and cause mental or emotional pain; distress. Today, American complain the most about having chronic pain. Those who suffer from chronic pain are taking prescription drugs in order to treat it. Each and every one of us handles or reacts to pain differently. Doctors use and rely on a scale of one to ten to measure the pain level of patients. Some are able to handle or tolerate pain differently than …show more content…
Tolerance for pain increases as we grow from childhood to adulthood. For example, in our previous discussions, the more you eat spicy or hot foods the less tolerable you are because it does not seems as spicy or hot as before. From my understanding, pain works the same way. The more frequently you have pain the more tolerable it becomes coping with it. Another example would be someone who has arthritis. When the person feels arthritis for the first time, it is very painful. After they have had the arthritis for quite some time, the pain does not seem to be as painful and are able to tolerate it more easily. Today, physicians prescribe opioids to patients to help reduce pain. Unfortunately, this causes the body to adapt to the sensitivity of the pain, causing the pain to intensify and does not provide the pain relief