As a nurse, I asked the "rate the pain on a 1 to 10 scale" all the time. I would say 9 out of 10 patients said the pain was a "10." I reminded patients that 10 was the worst pain they had ever felt in their life. If you are hospitalized and want something for pain you better rate your pain at least a "5."

Pain is subjective but a "3" is tolerable in my interpretation. It is "normal baseline pain" to me.

I hear you about asking a real question about pain. For PMR, I usually brushed aside the numeric pain scale question in favor of a "relative age scale" For example, I would say that I felt like I was 100 years old when I was only 60 years old. To capture the amount of stiffness along with the pain, I would say rigor mortis was setting in.

I don't think that "no pain" is a realistic goal. That's one reason why I separate pain into "normal pain" and "abnormal pain." I understand that any pain is abnormal for many people. When we have an autoimmune disorder, that pain falls into the abnormal category. In case someone didn't understand--- I would explain that the autoimmune pain happened for no reason at all.