When Did Physical Ailments Become a Competition?

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I have to thank @JohnRoberts for the idea for this discussion yet again. Sheesh, if I keep getting ideas from him he's going to demand half of my payout here! The Information Age hasn't necessarily been great in every regard. One of the things I think it's doing is turning us into a nation of hypochondriacs. Let the "health watch" segment on the local newscast have a feature about some disease and the next morning every doctor office in town is fielding calls about it. There's something else in the health world that's become an issue, and that is -- for lack of a better descriptor or term -- pain comparison. I"m not talking about what someone thinks is the "worst pain" (I've heard that kidney stones usually win that argument, which scares me because kidney stones run in my family). I'm talking more along the lines of, "Oh, that's nothing. MY pain is/was so bad...." We are ALL individuals. That means that ten people can experience the same thing and have ten completely different and unique reactions to it. That also means that we each have different reactions to pain. I remember this from being a medical transcriptionist: some patients were labeled as having a very high threshold for pain and others very low. (I'm in the former category, if you're interested.) That means that some people can have the exact same issue (let's say, a broken ankle) and some will be on a morphine drip (that's a joke, son as Foghorn Leghorn used to say) and others will be taking half a Tylenol every other day. I don't know if it's an attempt to generate sympathy (as Warren Zevon once sang, "Poor Poor Pitiful Me") or if people really think that the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality of having a bigger house and better and newer car somehow translates to having bigger medical issues. I'll just say this: for all of you hurting, physically and/or emotionally, I pray for relief. It doesn't matter if you're hurting more or less than I am. That pain is real to you, and you need understanding and relief, not a smug, "Oh, you aren't hurting as badly as I am" dismissal. Here's a Levon Helm cover of a JB Lenoir blues song: