It occurred to me today that pain is something that you can get used to.

I burnt my foot about a week and a half ago, right on the bottom of it, by stepping on something hot that I didn’t know was there, while walking around barefoot. Whatever it was that I stepped on burnt through several layers of the skin on the bottom of my foot. It hurt pretty bad. Then, the burn closed over with new, calloused skin on the bottom of my foot, and that hurt a little less and a little differently. Rather than being a sharp pain that was localized to a specific area, once the burn closed over, it became a dull pain that hurt with every step over a significant part of the ball of my foot.

This created a couple of problems. The first problem that it created was that I started walking on the foot funny, to favor the burnt area on the bottom of it. Walking on the outside edge of the foot caused my weight distribution to be a little bit different than normal. By the time the burn on the bottom of my foot healed (closed over), I’d ended up messing up my plantar fascia. The problem with stressed-out plantar fascia during the summer is that I love to be barefoot and these ligaments –the plantar fascia– require proper support as much as possible, if they are going to heal.

One of the other problems with plantar fasciitis (irritation of the plantar fascia) is that I’m a runner, and it’s very painful. I haven’t been able to run since Monday. I’ve been hobbling around ever since it became painful to walk.

As much as I love to be barefoot in the summer, I have recently had to wear my running shoes, with socks, to get my foot the proper support that it needs to be able to heal. While I’m on the mend, and things have almost gotten back to normal, I’ve noticed a few things about the pain from it.

One of the things that I noticed is that you can get used to pain.

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My daughter got a case of swimmer’s ear this week. If you don’t know what swimmer’s ear is, you get it as a bacterial infection of the ear canal. It can be quite painful, and my daughter has been complaining of the pain for about four days now. A couple of days ago, we finally decided to have our pediatrician call in a prescription for some antibiotic ear drops. As we’ve been putting the ear drops in her ears, they have been taking some time to get rid of the bacterial infection, and of course, her pain continues.

The funny thing about her pain is that she’s gotten used to it.

As she was complaining about the pain earlier in the week, we asked her to describe it on a pain scale, just like they do in the hospital. As she told us about the pain that was significantly bothering her, she described the pain with a number that has been pretty constant throughout the week. The thing that has changed throughout the week, while the pain number has remained pretty constant, is the extent to which my daughter has been bothered by the pain in question.

Earlier in the week, my daughter seemed on the verge of tears when she described the pain in her ear. Yesterday, describing the pain in her ear, she almost seemed bored talking about it.

I’ve been wondering about this change as the days have gone by. I don’t know what leads us to become accustomed to the pain in our lives, but it is most certainly a fact that we do. I also wonder whether or not my daughter has been finding ways to deal with the pain, because of the hope that she has the her medicine will soon work –> the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

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This concept doesn’t just apply to physical pain, either. I unfortunately know this for a fact.

If you’ve ever lost someone very close to you, then you probably know what I’m talking about. Grief can become a very close presence in your life, in deed. That grief can stay, for days and weeks and months, and the pain becomes something that you learn to tolerate. Sometimes, rather than making our way through a process of healing so we can get to the place where the pain is manageable, we instead become fixated on the pain of grief, and we start to own that pain as something that we can hold onto.

This isn’t healthy, of course. Grief is supposed to be a temporary pain. Death takes people away from us, and we will never get those people back, of course, but that grief isn’t supposed to be a permanent pain. No pain is supposed to be permanent.

* * *

Pain is supposed to be an indication of a problem, something that gets out attention, to cause us to take actions to correct these problems. Sometimes the problems can be corrected, but more often than not, the process simply involves a passage of time during which healing can take place.

It is an interesting facet of human emotional processing that we can incorporate pain into our routine daily experience. I guess you would call this coping.

But, I also know that there is an end to everything. Pain doesn’t last forever, and the fact that we can outlast most of the situations in life that cause of us pain can bring us a measure of hope. I like to remember the phrase, “This too shall pass.” to remind me that better days are sure to come.

If you are dealing with pain in your life, do what you can to get it checked out. Also, understand that time will help to get you through it. And hope. Don’t forget the hope.