As a medical student, the prism of pain helped me begin seeing patients as people — discerning their stories, examining their bodies, understanding their lives, and more. In medical schools around the world, the first simulated patient students encounter to emulate the rituals and mannerisms of medicine is someone in pain. Yet chronic pain, particularly the kind not emanating from a broken bone or an inflamed appendix, seemed like a distant, hazy concept for me.
That changed when, one day while exercising, I heard a loud click in my back and the metal bar I was holding with 200 pounds of weights came crashing down on my chest, pinning me to the bench.