An autistic woman who was asked to rate her pain on a scale from 1 to 10 has so many follow-up questions that her doctor’s appointment risks becoming an interrogation, according to reports.
Paige Thomas, 24, attends regular appointments for her chronic pain, although she has never quite worked out how to rate said pain given the abundance of metrics she measures it by in her head. Thomas has reportedly resorted to asking as many questions as she can so that she can arrive at a number she is still not completely satisfied with.
Thomas said: “In order to give an accurate answer, I need to know a few things. For example, if I feel like my bones are crunchy, what would that be? And if they didn’t only feel crunchy, but like they were stabbing me in my soft parts, but gently? Gently stabbing. Imagine stabbing someone with their own bones but thinking that you’re doing it for their own good. What would I rate that?”
“And what if I’d often rate my pain as extreme but if I keep saying high numbers they’ll shift my baseline up and then it’ll seem like it’s not that bad, rather than the reality which is that I am CONSTANTLY SUFFERING?”
Thomas was then forced to start all over again as she had developed a tension headache.
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