How to Describe Your Cancer Pain

This video will help you describe your pain.

The better you can describe your pain, the better you and your healthcare provider can work together to manage it.

Pain is a common concern for people with cancer. Sometimes cancer itself is painful, and sometimes the treatments can cause pain. It's important to remember that having cancer doesn't mean you will have pain. And if you do have pain, there are many ways to treat it.

Pain can be short-term or long-term. Short-term pain is also called acute pain. Acute pain will usually go away as your body recovers from surgery or other treatments to fight cancer.

Pain that is lasting is called chronic pain. Chronic pain can be from cancer pressing on an organ, bone, or nerve, or from treatment that damages nerves. When nerves are damaged, they short-circuit, which sends pain signals.

Rating Your Pain.

To treat your pain, your healthcare providers will need to understand what your pain feels like to you. One way to describe pain is by how much it hurts. This is also called its intensity.

Your healthcare providers will ask you to use a pain scale to describe the intensity of your pain. There are different pain scales, but those seen here are most common.

The scale ranges from zero, meaning no pain, to ten, which is the worst pain you can imagine.

There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to describing your pain, but you might find it easier to rate your pain if you have more information than just the numbers.

Let's look at the scale more closely.

Pain rated as one through three is considered mild pain. Mild pain may be described as nagging, annoying, or distracting, and may or may not interfere with your daily activities.

Pain rated four through six is considered moderate pain. Moderate pain can get in the way of what you need to do every day. If you're deeply involved in an activity, you might be able to ignore moderate pain. It can be pretty strong and make it hard to concentrate on anything but the pain.

Pain rated between seven and ten is considered severe pain. Severe pain is disabling. It can take over your senses and limit your ability to perform your normal daily activities.

Severe pain may make it hard to sleep. You may not be able to do anything physical, and even talking can be difficult. Severe pain is often described as intense and sometimes even unbearable or excruciating.

Pain that's a ten is the worst possible pain.

Describe the Pain.

Besides intensity, you may need to describe what the pain feels like, such as stabbing, throbbing, dull, or radiating, which is when it feels like the pain is moving from one location to another.

When it Started.

You'll also want to tell your healthcare provider when the pain started, how often you have the pain, how long the pain lasts, what you were doing when the pain started, if anything makes the pain feel better or worse, and whether following the treatment your healthcare provider recommended makes it any better.

You'll probably find that writing these things down will help you and your healthcare provider learn the best ways to control your pain.

This video explains some ways you can describe your pain to your healthcare provider. It's important to talk with your healthcare provider about your pain so that you can work together to manage it.

For more information about pain and other information about cancer and cancer care, visit our website at www.mskcc.org/pe.