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On Pain

2016-05-10 · letter vlog · John · 3:20 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic, on location, community lore

From the dentist, John recounts the 13 years of chronic mouth pain that followed a bike messenger hitting his face in Chicago, and argues that physical pain is unshareable and isolating, yet knowing pain can make people more empathetic, and listening to and believing people in pain can be good medicine.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — At the dentist: Katherine's airport-or-dentist joke; 150+ visits since the bike messenger accident

  • ★★ After John's last video teased where he was going next and Katherine commented it was a toss-up between the dentist and the airport, John says he is at the dentist. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Katherine Green
  • ★★★ John says he has been to the dentist more than 150 times in the 13 years since (2003) a bike messenger's shoulder ran into his face as he stood on a Chicago curb reading a novel. — 00:00:11 · Chicago (city)
  • ★★★ John says the original fractures were misdiagnosed, leading to a long-term infection, many surgeries and ongoing pain. — 00:00:22

00:00:29 — John's history of complaining about his mouth pain in videos since 2007; the oral surgeon's 'probably nothing to worry about'; good care now

  • ★★ John says the pain goes way back: he complained about it in his third video ever, in January 2007, again a few months ago with his mouth still numb, and talked around it in between. — 00:00:33
  • ★★ John reveals that the doctor's visit he complained about in March 2007 was actually a dentist visit, where his oral surgeon told him he probably had nothing to worry about; past John read that as meaning he definitely did, and was right. — 00:00:48
  • ★★ John says that surgeon is no longer his; he now has some of the best dentists and oral surgeons and is very lucky, but it often still hurts a lot. — 00:01:07

00:01:18 — Pain is unshareable: his son's ant bite, Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain, pain as isolation and a prison of self

  • ★★★ John says that besides the pain itself, which he finds literally maddening, a problem of physical pain is that it is essentially unshareable. — 00:01:18
  • ★★ John's six-year-old son, bitten by an ant, said it hurt like this and pinched him, trying to shrink the space between his pain and John's understanding. — 00:01:26 · Henry Green
  • ★★★ John says language is always inadequate in the face of pain, and being pinched doesn't help you understand someone else's ant bite either. — 00:01:37
  • ★★★ John says it is very hard, if not impossible, to bridge that empathy gap. — 00:01:46 · empathy
  • ★★ John calls Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain brilliant and says Mike Rugnetta first recommended it to him. — 00:01:51
  • ★★★ Elaine Scarry (quoted): John quotes Scarry: to have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt. — 00:01:58
  • ★★★ John says physical pain can be profoundly isolating: no similes, metaphors or pinches can let anyone know what your pain is like, nor you theirs. — 00:02:04
  • ★★★ John says pain reminds you that you are alone inside your body, that no one can access your consciousness, and that the self is in some ways a prison with no earthly escape. — 00:02:22
  • ★★ John finds this horror-movie terrifying and says that is how he feels when pain turns him inward in an ever-tightening spiral. — 00:02:35

00:02:43 — Turning outward: suffering is not ennobling, but knowing pain can build empathy; listening and believing as medicine; sign-off

  • ★★ John says turning toward hope is challenging with chronic pain but not impossible, admitting that is easy for him to say with excellent care and no constant pain. (hedged) — 00:02:44
  • ★★★ John says he does not subscribe to the notion that suffering is somehow ennobling: it sucks. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says that when you can turn outward, knowing pain can make you much more empathetic, which helps us alleviate each other's suffering. (hedged) — 00:03:00 · empathy
  • ★★★ John says that sometimes listening generously to people in pain and believing them can be very good medicine. (hedged) — 00:03:08

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description highly recommends Scarry's The Body in Pain to anyone who lives with chronic pain or loves someone who does. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: chronic pain · pain

Also: Chicago (city) · consciousness · Elaine Scarry · empathy · Henry Green · Katherine Green · The Body in Pain

Only in the description or credits: Mike Rugnetta

Also centred on chronic pain: Pain Destroys Language: John after the Dentist

Also centred on pain: PUNISHMENT OF PAIN AND SCIENCE! · My Physicalmental Illness · Pain · Tuberculosis and Hank's Shingles

Replies to

  • continues · Brotherhood 2.0: January 8, 2007 — “In fact I complained about it in January of 2007 in the third video I ever made.”
  • continues · No Fumar — “So in last week's video I said,”

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