I'm Thankful we don't have to experience pain to learn about it (my doctor-patient view point on Tonsillitis)

Ironically, I took ill after I posted tips for coping with cold. As humorous as God is, I was down with Tonsillitis- a kind of throat infection which is much more painful than a regular sore throat (that's my new definition-  I really don't care what any other text may call it). This episode of Tonsillitis has opened my eyes to the many dimensions of pain.

Pain is a very personal experience. In medical school, we are taught the characteristics of pain, but in my opinion to really understand pain we have to feel it. Imaginably, if we had to feel pain to understand pain, I definitely would have dropped out of medical school! In medical school, we learnt about different kinds of pain and their characteristics. I also learnt to ask my patients to rate their pain on a scale of 1- 10, with 10 being the most severe. However sometimes when a patient claims the 8-10 range, I give them my "drug dependent" look- like they are drug addicts :$.

  my "drug dependent" look

When we talked about radiation of pain in class, I  always imagined pain reappearing somewhere else. So when I ask my patient "does the pain go anywhere?" and they say "yes... to my arm" for example; I sometimes imagine they may have read up the symptoms on the internet and have come armed with the correct signs and symptoms. Incidentally My mother used to say - "its the person that wears the shoes that knows where it hurts"...


I must say here, I'm a pretty healthy person. I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to have a headache:) so you can imagine my horror when I woke up with a nasty pain in my throat. I've had sore throats before, and I guess I know what they are, however this was a different kind of pain. I was alarmed. I knew something was definitely wrong!!! I tried to swallow and it hurt some more. I got out of bed, and went to the mirror, picked my phone for the flash light, opened my mouth as wide as it would permit and I saw it! Lo and behold, I had the dreaded Tonsillitis!

Armed with a pre-knowledge of what to do, I began following the rituals of what I needed to do. While I was drinking my first cup of tea, as the tea hits the back of my throat, I noticed a sharp pain in my left ear. Immediately I understood... the famous question... where does the pain radiate to?... I took some paracetamol aka PCM for the pain and proceeded back to bed. The pain in my ear was rather unbearable. It felt as though I was waiting endlessly for my PCM to kick in which made me remember how another woman i had labelled drug dependent calls PCM chalk. I began to wonder if I was already drug dependent... and then it hit me, I needed to step up my pain relief tablet. which I did. Eventually I did get some sleep. I continued my warm tea, warm saline gargle and vitamin C ritual till I was able to eat solid meals again.

This ordeal has helped me understand very much the patho-physiology (medical term for disease evolution) and management of Tonsillitis. Thank you nature for this crash/refresher course. I hope I wont have any more soon or ever again... Thank you:)

Most of all, I'm thankful we don't have to experience pain to learn about it.

With this illness; I've learned a couple of things

• pain is very personal
• pain is quite distressing
• pain really does radiate
• the pain associated with tonsillitis is an 8 for me, so i guess a heart attack for me would possibly be like an 18 and maybe labour would be a 100.... and that's out of 10!!!
• to believe some of my patients when they say their pain isn't controlled. not everyone is a junkie...
• PCM sometimes feels like chalk
• Doctors are really the worst group of patients!
• Maybe experience is a good teacher. isn't it why we do a number of practicals?

Thank God Medicine is practice (practice makes perfect), I guess I would be able to empathize better with my next patient of tonsillitis

Dr Anonymous
xo