

Pain: The Great Equalizer
Cancer reduces you to your bottom denominator and this is where the rubber meets the road. Pain doesn’t show up on x-rays or blood tests so the medical community uses a pain measurement scale probably conceived by a twenty-something engineer in 1685, who never experienced anything worse than a hang-nail. You are given a form to fill out with questions like: “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is this pain?” You try to remain calm as you visualize inserting the form, pencil