Introducing my Pain Gremlin...

I find that patients are amazingly descriptive when it comes to their pain. It helps to translate one's pain into terms that other people can understand (or try to understand) and doing so can be very therapeutic.

I imagine my pain to look a little like this guy....

He's actually named "Hungry" and is the face of the new Weight Watcher's campaign but I've decided he's also going to be the new face of my pain. He's naughty, difficult to ignore, and not easily subdued. If that doesn't say "chronic pain," then I don't know what does.

For a long time, I've imagined the source of my pain to be a tiny gremlin who uses my nerve fibers as Tarzan ropes and sniggers at my paltry attempts to subdue his shenanigans. For awhile, I pictured this little beast to look something like the gremlin who terrorizes John Lithgow in that famous episode of the Twilight Zone; however, when I tracked down a picture of that thing, I decided it was way too scary to be living inside of my body.

Then I was in the hospital for my stimulator surgery and I saw a Weight Watcher's commercial featuring one very misbehaved "Hungry" monster. He was exactly how I imagined my little pain gremlin to be!

Here he is with some donuts. He looks cute..but don't get too close. He bites.


He also does voodoo and is into various forms of magic...

So now you know how I think of my pain. How do you think of yours?