As much as I would love to talk to my pain specialist like that, she doesn’t understand that. Her scale is 1-10 Pain with 10 being the worst ever felt, 0 no pain at all.
The worst pain I’ve ever felt? I would love to be able to say childbirth, after all I was in labor for 54 hours with contractions 2 minutes apart for better part of 43 hours, but no. The worst pain of my life I set the 10 mark at is the worst Migraine of my life.
It hit without warning—no aura or premonition as I usually have— and my head felt like the right side of it was instantly was being split open with an axe. The pain sliced through my right eye and back toward the back of my head hard as if someone had shoved an ice pick through my skull.
I took my meds— Demerol 50mg and Promethazine 100mg and stretched out in my bed in the dark praying for some relief only for my mouth and face and right arm to instantly begin to buzz and go numb.
I knew nothing was going to stop.
I stumbled out into the brightly lit living room (not realizing not a light was lit and it was dusk), to meet my husband and son and tell them... something.
The rest of the evening is a literal blur.
I remember only bits and pieces: the piercing glare of the ER overhead lights before they went out, the nurse asking for my pain on a scale on 1-... and stopping and answering a 10 on the chart herself and then simply turning to my husband and mumbling something and walking out of the trauma room, and wanting to scream but knowing if I did I wouldn’t be able to stop the nausea from becoming more.
After that I woke up in my own bed and my eighteen year old son was sleeping beside me, holding my hand where he had been for the last three days.
That is my ten.

So when I say an eight or a nine, maybe the doctor or you have a clue to the pain I live with each day.