Difficult Pain

The pain that
women present with is often an enigma. For medical science too. In this text I explain how attending to the chronic pain that women most often present with has supposed both a professional and personal challenge for me. In order to respond to that challenge, I have sought to bring different aspects of my experience together, escaping the compartmentalization that most university disciplines of knowledge offer us. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to do so alongside a research group from Duoda and the work of the artist Cori Mercadé. The result has been surprising even for me. A new perspective and understanding in regards to what —in terms of opportunity and recreation of reality— medical diagnoses represent. And, at the same time, how it changes the way that we use them for those who suffer and those who attend. Difficult pain, which has sometimes been expressed as Stabat Mater, requires the work of words.