Pain Tolerance

A 21-year-old male presented to the ER with a couple of days of progressively worsening abdominal pain, now located over his right lower quadrant. As he was telling me his story, his opening statement was, “I use marijuana every day, so I have a high pain tolerance.”

I ignored the ignorance of his comment at the time because correcting it would not have helped our interaction. He had appendicitis, and that was the bigger concern.

However, regarding what he said about pain tolerance, as is often the case in the ER, pain tolerance is inversely proportional to what a patient claims it is. In this case, that was absolutely true. He uses marijuana every day because he can’t cope with the world; therefore, he has no pain tolerance. But his worldview is the opposite.

I can’t fix that.