Whether acute or chronic, we often hear pain described as something to "fight", much like the famous "fight" against decay, periodontal disease, or various general conditions.
This curious medical language, martial in nature, sometimes goes as far as treating pain as something to be "killed". No less.
English speakers do say "painkillers" for analgesics, an expression that may well contribute to the overuse of these drugs, with consequences we all know.
Of course, when you are suffering, you can feel that urge to "kill" the pain.
And when you are the clinician, nothing is more natural than wanting to make the other person's pain disappear by effective means.
Pain is at once a signal, a language and an obstacle. Even when it wears the clothes of an enemy, it is in fact a friend to the person in whom it appears, because it gives them a precious alarm signal.
On two conditions.
The first is that the signal be understood, then followed by appropriate action based on the diagnosis. Rest, protection, treatment of a lesion, or any other suitable therapy: there is no shortage of means.
The second is that the pain system itself not be dysfunctional, as happens at times for various reasons. In that case, the dysfunction must also be considered and treated.
For the clinician, pain is sometimes an enemy too, when it stands in the way of delivering care properly.
But it is also our friend, because it is a valuable aid to diagnosis and to assessing treatment. It is, for instance, an early and precious indicator that an inflammatory lesion of endodontic origin is healing, since it comes long before bone remineralization, which is a reliable but late radiological sign of healing.