A similar thread came up a while back....
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...d.php?t=139098
I'm sure there are others via the search facility/tool.

I've had many discussions with doctors about this subject over the years, because when they tell me that 10 represents the "worst pain imaginable", I usually come back with, "OK, but I've got a VERY vivid imagination!" (From seeing a lot of "R" rated movies, if you catch my drift...)

Several people (including some doctors) have tried to objectify the scale by assigning benchmarks to the numbers, e.g. the Hochman Pain Scale.

For a while, when filling out a form at a doctor's/PM clinic, I used to make a note that my numbers were in accordance with (whatever) scale. It turned out that that didn't matter because they usually hadn't heard of any of these objective scales, and they really weren't interested anyway.

It turns out that doctors aren't really interested in objectivity or subjectivity; they're interested in relative changes over time, whether it's the nurse coming in to the ER bay to ask us every hour or two (to determine if we're the same, better, or worse) or when they ask us each time we come in for an office visit to determine, again, how we're doing over time. At least this does seem to account for longterm pain seeming to "feel" worse just from wearing us down.

So now that I've existed/endured (I wouldn't call it "living") with chronic pain for several years, and having reviewed several of the objective scales, I kind of have a handle of where I am, so I use that number as my own baseline, and answer the question based on better/same/worse than my own baseline (which is what they're looking for).

As far as telling friends, they may not be savvy to the whole 1-10 thing anyway, so I usually try to analogize it in terms they'll understand, e.g. "Remember how your back & legs felt the day after you moved?" or "ever had sciatica or a spasm/cramp/charliehorse that literally doubled you over or spun you around?" A lot of good articles can be found googling: describing pain.

Doc