Health and Disability

If you don’t have chronic pain or have never experienced chronic illness, it can be hard to understand just how all-consuming pain–and related symptoms like overwhelming fatigue–can be. Writer Christine Miserandino penned a metaphorical essay, “The Spoon Theory,”in an attempt to explain to nondisabled people what it’s like to live with chronic pain and chronic illness; the essay has struck a chord with chronically ill people online, and “spoons” has become shorthand among many ill folks who find the term useful. But there are some situations where the spoon metaphor falls short–at least for me–and I’ve struggled before with communicating exactly how disabling chronic pain can be, and what it feels like, in talking to both nondisabled people and other people with disabilities.

Lots of people–especially nondisabled people–seem to not understand that chronic pain is ongoing, that it can actually be disabling, and, above all, that it can be beyond their understanding. I have heard people say that chronic pain, especially in young people, is “not a disability disability” and that people who claim to have chronic pain should just take some Advil and shut up (though not in those exact words).