Work sucked tonight. I was gonna go home early, but then one of the nurses' little girl was having a fever and was in day care. She had to go pick her up, so I said I would stay few more hours. Actually I didn't mind, I was scheduled to work anyway. The sucking part was one of my patients started to have more pain and just out of control anxiety. I spent almost an hour in there total. I had given her everything she could have, I even called the doc for more pain meds. She just had her other knee done couple weeks ago, and she kept comparing this knee to the other one. She just couldn't believe how this one could hurt much more. I explained to her they are two different knees. Then she said she jsut didn't think she should be having this much pain when she's in the hospital. That didn't make any sense at all. We were always told that pain is whatever the patient says. I'd like to believe that, and I do a good job of providing pain relief to my patients, but there's a limit. When you see your patients sound asleep, then you wake them up and ask how their pain is, they still say it's at a 10, you'd wonder, wouldn't you? I think some people are more dramatic than others, just like how we are in life. Yes, we all have different pain tolerance, but I think we all have different ways to deal with pain too. Even though it's the same level of pain, some people tough it up because they know certain pain is inevitable while others choose to scream and cry. There are so many patients who don't know how to deal with pain would tell us to just knock them out with narcotics. We have advanced a lot in medicine, but they still have to cut your flesh open in surgery. If paper cut hurt like hell, what do you think having a big old incision will feel? People need to get real. Things are easlier nowaday, but having a major surgery is no picnic. Don't expect things to be easy especially when it's an elective surgery.We nurses do our best to get you well, but you got to do your part too. Remember, "No pain, no gain".