Quite a lot of pain today

It's amazing how we forget past experiences when it comes to pain. People often say that you forget the pain of childbirth almost immediately, and that it's an evolutionary mechanism - if you remembered what it was like then you wouldn't get pregnant again.  When I was in labour with my second child I can remember saying "it hurts, I don't remember it hurting last time?!"

I haven't experienced any prolonged periods of pain with my crohn's for some years now.  I think that I must have forgotten what it was like.  I have been in quite a lot of pain today.  I have short spasms of pain that wash over me suddenly for a few seconds and it takes my breath away. I have to stop what I'm doing momentarily as I wait for it to subside.  I don't remember it being like that around the time that I was diagnosed but I'm sure if anything it must have been worse. By the time I was diagnosed, I had had diaorrhea for 6 months, lost 3 stone, and whilst working in a pub, often slipped into the cellar to quietly curl up whilst I waited for a pain to pass.  I remember doing this. I also remember one particular occassion when a pain had come when I was in the middle of serving a customer.  I thought I had done very well at completely ignoring it and continuing with my job, but the customer actually said to me. "Are you alright?  You've gone white as a sheet."

I remember all of this, and yet I don't remember what the actual pain was like.  The pain I have had today feels like the worst pain I've felt, and yet I'm sure that this is not the case.

This a very strange concept that raises many questions for me.  Why is it that we do not remember the feeling of pain?  Is it a trauma that we blank out because we don't want to remember it?  Is it that it's a feeling that we experience in the moment, that doesn't enter the brain in the same way as, for example, a thought process.  Perhaps that's it.   It's a reflex response.  We feel pain for example if we place our hand in a flame. If we didn't feel that pain, then we wouldn't automatically move our hand away.

What I do know, is that in a way I wish I did remember exactly what the pain in my gut was like.  Then I would be better prepared when it comes on.