Part of the problem in defining pain is that we all feel pain differently. A type or level of pain that might drive me crazy may be barely felt by you. In nursing school they couldn't pound it in hard enough: Never ever judge a person's pain. If they say they're in pain, they are. As to how bad that pain is, falls under what I stated above; we all feel pain differently. The rating scale still in use, 1-10 usually, is actually very effective for rating pain. Chronic pain, too, can range from 1-10, varying on different days. What seems to befuddle doctors is when we have a pain that they can't point to a specific injury as a cause. For someone like me where they haven't found an underlying illness I'm sure they wonder how much of it is just in my head. I'd like to, for just one of my worse nights, let them experience the pain and discomfort I deal with. *Then* they would 'get' it. I hate it when the doctor acts like I'm simply imagining the pain. "Oh, you can't be feeling that. There's no physical reason for you to be feeling pain." Yeah, right. Tell it to my feet.