(The Guardian) – Do you scream when you stub your toe? Could you play a grand final with a shattered jaw, or work all day as your belly fills with blood? When it comes to suffering, perspective is everything

Each one of us feels pain. We all stub our toes, burn our fingers, knock our knees. And worse. The problem with living in just one mind and body is that we can never know whether our six out of 10 on the pain scale is the same as the patient in the chair next to us.

About one in five adults experience chronic pain; it can be debilitating and patients have been historically dismissed, disrespected and under-treated. Acute pain is different; it’s short periods of pain usually associated with an injury, illness or tissue damage. Because all humans experience acute injury or illness, we each have a sense of our pain response. Many of us wonder, “Do I have a high pain threshold?” And we have each at some point been asked – by a doctor, by a nurse, by a teammate – “What’s your pain on a scale of one to 10?” (Read More)