Tom,
I agree with Nelie that women tend to be the ones more apt to tough it out. No broad generalization intended, but in my experience as a nurse, women make far better patients then men. Men express their pain and discomfort better then women do. I was very stoic during my treatment, that's my way as I have a double whammy with being a woman and being of Indian blood. I found it impossible for me to give up my caretaker role and become the needy one! I used on pain medication during my treatments, vicodin, that I would take twice a day. Once after my daily radiation treatment and again when it was time for bed. I have always believed that some people are set up to tolerate pain better, they are more able in some way to control themselves and their reactions to it. I have 7 children, 5 of them natural, nothing (two of them blisfully pain free!) and I didn't so much as whimper once during labor. But there were women in there that SCREAMED througout the entire thing. I found myself able to focus on something else, counting is my mainstay, and it would almost remove me from the pain. I know this sounds strange, odd, all that good stuff. But it's how I deal with bad situations. So handling the physical pain of the conventional radiation I had was the easy part. The emotional part of it was tougher on me, as it affected not only me but all around me. My kids already feared that I was going to die, I made sure I was honest with them and they knew that was a possibility. I absolutely had to do my best to appear as strong as possible. They knew I was sick, they knew I was in pain, but they also saw me keep on pushing to remain as active and normal as possible, so that made them feel better. I never once tried to pretend I wasn't sick, I simply didn't let it define me at that time. I became during that time the same mom they had always had..............just now she was dealing with some stuff that would go away eventually. I found it easier to let my family recognize my physical pain and very difficult to allow them to see my emotional pain. 99% of my fear came from the thought of my children having to deal with my death, and those were not feelings I could share with a 9, 11, 12 year old.
So, I think we need to speak up to the professionlas about the pain, keep it under control. I believe we should allow our family to know we're in pain but not to focus the entire house on it, don't allow the families lives to revolve around our pain.