In the past ten years that I have been dealing with constant pain, I do find that I am not always paying attention to the pain signals. It just becomes background noice, like a dull roar. I got a reminder this morning that when something specific in the pain changes, I really need to get it checked out.

I have described dystonic muscle cramps in my articles before, but in case you missed it: dystonia is one of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. This is the pain that usually comes in the morning – my muscles clench up like very tight fists and I can’t move very well. My toes curl under and my feet turn inward. If my hands are still free for an extra minute or so, I often try to walk on the outside edges of my feet to get to my bed to wait out the spasms.

For the past six weeks or so, the outside of my left foot has been hurting a lot more than usual. I ignored the pain for about a month, since I thought it was just my foot rebelling for not treated it more kindly. I finally went to my physiotherapist. He gave me a few exercises and tried acupuncture, but the pain kept getting worse.

I finally went to my family doctor this morning. He promptly sent me to the hospital for X-rays. Turns out I have been limping around with a broken bone in my foot for the past six weeks.

You would think I would have learned my lesson by now. A couple of years ago, my pain expanded to my lower back. I tried to ignore it for about a week. I hate going to my doctor to tell him that I am in pain – I am always in pain. I finally went to the ER when the pain became unbearable. It turned out to be a kidney infection.

Nobody likes to be in pain, but it really is a design feature to let us know when something is wrong. Without a sense of pain, you could do stuff like put your hand on the stove, and you could have severe burns by the time you pull your hand away. Lack of pain is the main symptom of leprosy. People with this disease suffer horribly with the damage done by inadvertently injuring themselves.

My point is that pain can be a good thing, although it feels like a bad thing. It’s like the old joke,”Doctor, doctor: it hurts when I do this!”, to which the doctor replies, “Stop doing that!”