Once I was sitting with a hero of mine, an older man who had been part of the civil rights movement and helped bring healthcare to hundreds of poor communities,

but who managed all of his do-gooding with a wicked sense of humor.

He was one of the most prolific and artful cussers I've ever known.

By the time of this meeting, he was in his 90s, so he had a long list of health problems and the pains that go with them.

He was talking about these problems, and they were all very serious.

His back was a mess. A disc had broken loose from the pack and was bulging out so far he could hardly walk.

He'd had cancer and was sure to couple organs, so he carried a bag on his hip to catch his urine, but it sometimes rubbed, making even sitting uncomfortable.

Also his eyes. There was a pressure on his left one. He couldn't see.

I loved this man. I'd known him since I was little, and intellectually I could tell that he was suffering.

The problem was that I had a hang nail. This tiny piece of skin about the size of a grain of rice on the outside of my ring finger,

and it was actually hurting me. A sharp, stabbing sting that completely dominated my attention.

I kept looking at it and the small red patch that surrounded it, so what he was describing was muted and distant, someone talking through a wall.

He had a pain. I had a pain. And what's a hang nail compared to cancer? Nothing. But it didn't matter.

Pain is easy to dismiss in other people, but our own pain has a way of grabbing our attention and holding it like a vice.

When pain takes us, it's hard to turn away.

Welcome to the fifth season of Invisibiliya. I'm Hannah Rosen, and I'm Elise Spiegel.

Invisibiliya is a show about all the invisible forces that shape human behavior, our thoughts, our emotions, our expectations.

And today we have a story about the complicated relationship between pain and attention.

This story starts as a medical mystery, but then it becomes something else. A story not just about one person's pain, but about the pain in all of us.

And how an obscure bureaucratic shift helps transform something as personal and intimate as our own hurt. Stick around.

Okay, so Elise is going to be telling the story today. It begins in a suburban one-story bungalow just outside Phoenix, Arizona.

Just a note, because it involves minors and medical information, we're not going to use last names. Here is Elise.

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