Pain is an interesting thing.  Even more interesting is how different people react to pain.  Somewhere along the way, someone decided that pain should be considered the fifth vital sign, that we need to regularly ask our patients to "rate" their pain on the wonderful 10 point pain scale, and then treat them accordingly.

Even better is the fact that this whole "pain as the fifth vital sign" thing has been demonstrated to be useless.

But we still stick with it, so you get patients calmly, in no apparent distress, telling you their pain is 11 out of 10 (even after you tell them that 0 is no pain, 10 is the worst possible pain they can imagine).  Perhaps people just have weak imaginations.

But in all of this, I have come to one very fundamental realization: Men are wussies.

That is especially true for men from the age of about 15 to 55.  They complain and complain and complain.  Once they get older, they seem to toughen up some, but men my age whine like it is going out of style.  It is embarrassing, quite honestly.

Women, they are much tougher.  They have their fair share of wussies as well, and they can be pretty darn needy.  But on the whole, they whine a lot less than their male counterparts.  In fact, the >60 year olds are often pretty much as tough as nails.

Yep, there is no doubt in my mind.  Us men?  We are the weaker sex.