What does pain look like? An intriguing question to be sure, but one I hadn’t even thought to ask until recently. Pain is one of those things that, like St. Augustine’s quandary over Time, presents a similar difficulty in defining. The International Association for the Study of Pain made a stab at it: ‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage,’ but somehow, it seems to lack the immediacy of its subject matter –it stands, like an observer, outside the issue. Poets have done a better job, I think. Emily Dickinson, for example: After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs’; or Kahlil Gibran: ‘pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self’; or even Oscar Wilde: ‘Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.’
But I was reminded of another of Wilde’s observations -‘We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.’- when I read a CBC article from November, 2016 entitled ‘Indigenous children, stoic about their pain, are drawn out with art’ http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/aboriginal-youth-art-pain-hurt-healing-1.3852646
‘”Aboriginal children feel and experience pain just like anyone else. It’s just that they express their pain very differently,” said John Sylliboy, community research co-ordinator with the Aboriginal Children’s Hurt and Healing Initiative.
‘”They don’t necessarily verbalize their pain, or they don’t express it outwardly through crying or through pain grimaces,” he told CBC News.’
‘These children are socialized to be stoic about their pain, to hold in their pain.’- Margot Latimer, Centre for Pediatric Pain Research, IWK Health Centre in Halifax. ‘”We noticed we weren’t seeing any First Nations youth referred to our pain clinic at the IWK hospital and wondered why that was so.”‘ It didn’t make sense, she thought — especially since research shows that chronic illness in First Nations communities is almost three times higher than in the general population. Aboriginal children are especially vulnerable, says Latimer, with higher rates of dental pain, ear infections, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.’
I found it very moving, and yet disturbing, that ‘[…] cultural traditions, and lingering effects from the residential school system, are some of the reasons Indigenous kids pull on their suit of armour against pain and hurt.’ But they’re children, and perhaps not yet completely shackled to all the subtleties of culture. ‘A group of Indigenous children and teenagers from four First Nations communities in the Maritimes were asked to paint their pain, to express their hurt through art. Researchers were hoping to tease out emotions from a population more inclined to show resilience to pain.’ But soon after, the children began to depict not just physical pain, but emotional pain as well. As Sylliboy points out, ‘”These kids told us about loneliness, sadness, darkness, bullying, hopelessness. It’s not the typical anxiety [or] depression. It is more complex than that.” “To these clinicians who are just asking about physical pain and not looking at emotional pain as well, it is important, because Aboriginal kids are showing us that there is no difference between emotional and physical pain”, said Sylliboy. “It’s just pain.”‘
And I learned another thing about pain –or maybe about children – ‘It’s all about creating a safe space for the children when they come to the hospital, says Latimer. She says it’s about learning a bit about them and gaining their trust. “When they come to the health centre, or a physician or a nurse practitioner, they want to tell their story, but we do not train health professionals to assess pain that way.”’
It reminded me of a patient I first met in the Emergency Department at the hospital when I was the gynaecologist on call one night. Edie, an aboriginal woman arrived with heavy bleeding –she was apparently in the throes of miscarrying an early pregnancy- and had brought her eight year old son to the hospital because she had no one to take care of him at home. The bleeding settled shortly after her arrival and an ultrasound in the department revealed that there was no further tissue left in the uterus, so fortunately we didn’t have to take her to the operating room. But the process of diagnosis and decision was not instantaneous. Although the little boy, Timmy, was clearly frightened, his face stayed neutral. And yet it seemed as if he was peeking through hole in a fence, and I could see his eyes carefully following my every move. One of the nurses volunteered to sit with him in the waiting room while I examined his mother, but I was the last one he stared at before leaving; I was the thing he didn’t understand.
I decided to let Edie rest on the stretcher for a while before discharge, and I thought I’d reassure Timmy before I left. He was sitting on the too-big chair as quietly and unmoving as an adult and when I approached, he stared at me like a deer hiding in a forest.
“Your mom’s going to be okay, Timmy,” I said with a big smile.
But he still seemed just as frightened, and stayed silent for a moment. “There was blood on her pants,” he mumbled, perhaps making sure I’d noticed. He allowed his eyes to venture out further into the open and he examined me again. “And she was hurting…”
What do you tell a little boy about his mother’s suffering? I knelt down on one knee in front of him so our eyes were on the same level and put a hand on his knee. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. “She’s not hurting now, Timmy,” I said and smiled again.
He looked at my hand and then he finally smiled. “Can she go home now?” When I nodded, he reached out and carefully touched one of my fingers, and then when I didn’t pull away, he patted my hand.
I never saw little Timmy again, but a few weeks later, Edie came to my office for a follow-up visit and to thank me for seeing her in the hospital in the middle of the night. “Timmy was really impressed,” she said and smiled. She ruffled through her purse and brought out a rumpled piece of paper she’d nonetheless folded carefully. “He drew this for you, doctor,” she said proudly, and handed it to me.
When I opened it up, it was a drawing of a hand in red crayon.
“He said it was to thank you…” She seemed embarrassed, and hesitated before continuing. “I asked him why he drew it in red…” she said.
She still seemed embarrassed, so I stayed silent until she felt ready to continue.
Edie studied me for a moment with her big brown eyes, still uncertain. Then her face relaxed and a big smile appeared. “He said maybe you were one of us, now…”
I could have cried.
