‘Those who love the world can be glad that it will continue after their death.’

No pain no gain? Elizabeth Coleman offers some insights from an experience of cancer

There are people with a rare genetic disorder which means that they do not feel pain. People with this disorder generally have shortened lives, during which they have to deal with injury and disability. Pain is good. Without it we are much more vulnerable to injury.

Acute pain is good, but chronic pain is completely different. It has no useful purpose, and can go on for years, with a significant impact on a person’s quality of life. While modern medicine has developed to deal with acute pain, it is not so good with chronic pain. Painkillers generally stop working if you use them long term, and may themselves cause pain.

I am interested in pain because I have had myeloma, a form of cancer, since the end of 2016. I was sixty-six years old then and the resulting low immunity meant that an attack of shingles was severe and prolonged. But CBT counselling sessions helped me to deal with low-level pain and I would like to share some of the things that I have learned.

The first thing is: don’t fight pain, accept it. Live with it as a familiar though rather unwelcome companion. I think of St Francis embracing Lady Poverty, and also talking about Sister Pain. He had a theology of sharing the suffering of Christ. I don’t subscribe to that but many, many people suffer pain, and I am part of that community. I feel more equal to people who have real difficulties in life now that I have difficulties of my own.

I think of John Woolman: ‘I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy colour between the south and the east, and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be, and live, and that I was mixed in with them, and henceforth might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being.’ (Qf&p 21.64)

Accepting pain really does make life easier, but need not stop you from doing what you can to reduce it. Getting the right painkillers is important and, as we are all different, it may take some trial and error. Mindfulness practice can make a big difference. You don’t need to be very ambitious – I just do five minutes twice a day – but I do it every day. Another big help is exercise, especially among green trees and grass.

When thinking about emotional pain, again I need to start by saying that pain is good. Evolution gave us our emotions to protect us, both individually and as groups. If we didn’t feel fear when we saw danger, we might not run away. If a mother did not feel love for her child, she might not look after it and enable it to survive. But, as with chronic pain which serves no useful purpose, there are emotional states like long-term depression and anxiety which may damage one’s quality of life and do no good.

The rich variety of emotions provides much of the interest and excitement in life. If you were offered a pill that would mean that you could be in a continuous state of happiness for the rest of your life, would you take it?

Now to death, another subject that I’ve thought about a lot since getting cancer.

I used to think that we were programmed to die, and so there was a sense of completion, a right time for life to end. But I’m not sure about that now, having learned a little about the science. In our days as hunter gatherers, we faced dangers from accident, disease, violence and other causes, and these were so frequent that almost everyone was dead before they were sixty. Evolution does not invest in what is unnecessary, otherwise all animals would have the best possible sight, hearing and sense of smell. So it didn’t invest much in keeping us alive and well after the age of sixty. It didn’t programme us to die; it just didn’t bother to do all that was necessary to keep us alive. Modern medicine can do a lot for us but, at present, it can’t change the fact that a young body is better than an old one.

What if medical science could stop the ageing process? If you could take a pill that would mean that your body was always like that of a thirty-year-old, so your life need have no end, would you accept it? What would society be like if everyone did?

Some fear death – the idea of not existing any more. But more people fear the process of dying, perhaps having seen others go through it. I think that medical science could make death a painless, reflective, even happy process, with the right development and use of drugs. The dying person could make choices about when and how it should happen, rather like planning a wedding. Then there would be no need to fear the process. But there is a deeply-held view that this would be wrong, held by many people, including many with no religious faith, which makes this impossible right now. I wonder how attitudes will have changed in a generation or two.

In my view the biggest benefit that we have gained from modern science is that we no longer routinely experience siblings or children dying as babies or as young people. Our ancestors must have been very resilient, in that they somehow coped with this emotionally, though surely with much anxiety and pain. I wouldn’t want to go back to the high child mortality of Victorian times and before, though the population boom has had devastating effects on the planet. But there are two things I would want from medicine. The first is really good contraception (the fact that even in rich countries so many women have abortions indicates that there could be a lot of improvement there). The second is really good pain control. These things are more important to me than preventing diseases of old age and delaying death.

Our attitude to death depends on our attitude to life. A completely selfish person might feel that death was the loss of everything. But those who love the world can be glad that it will continue after their death. As Walter de la Mare wrote in ‘Fare Well’:

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
    Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller’s Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
    Posies once mine.

But love of the world can also cause pain. We may care less about our own death than about the future that we have left for our children, in a world full of nuclear weapons, with the sea full of plastic.

We will all die. I hope to have quite a few more years on earth, not to have a long period of severe disability, and to die without too much pain.

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Comments

I enjoyed reading this article about pain and death! It was very philosophical and humane. Thank you

By nyinmodelek@btinternet.com on 14th August 2020 - 15:14

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