Participant quotes relating to theme A: Children’s wide-ranging experiences of pain
| Quote | Code |
| A spectrum of pain | |
| It feels like I’m being stabbed when there’s like, a sharp spike. It feels like I’ve been stabbed and sometimes it just goes like…where it’s stabbing and stabbing. (P7) | 1a |
| It feels like you’re on fire. (P4) | 1b |
| It can go anything from like…a dull background to I dunno, like, if my arms hurt and I try to lift them you’re just like ‘ooh’ you know it’s like a jab. (P11) | 1c |
| It feels really like tight… like when you accidently prick yourself like with a pin or something…. it feels like a load of pins in muscles hurting it quite a bit. (P1) | 1d |
| The worst pain is in my back cos it’s like a pain that actually like hurts, the rest of it’s kind of, just more uncomfortable, um and like, subtle in a way, I guess like, the pain my back is like, I wanna say pounding but not, pounding’s not the right word cos it doesn’t do that, but it’s like, stronger. (P9) | 1e |
| Distribution of pain: from everywhere’ to specific body sites | |
| It’s more noticeable in, in like my back, particularly like my upper back and over my shoulders. (P11) | 2a |
| In my neck my arms and my legs, and I get pain in my hands and my feet as well. I get pain everywhere, really. (P9) | 2b |
| A lot in my neck, on the right-hand side of my neck as well, at the bottom, and at the top…but then also lower down the spine nearer to my hips. (P5) | 2c |
| Walking upstairs, like, all my bones and stuff all start to hurt. (P1) | 2d |
| I started getting joint pain then. But it’s kind of like, every, every joint really. (P4) | 2e |
| I get a lot of headaches and migraines and I also just get general like joint pain. I used to have a lot of back problems, where it would like kind of like be really painful to move my back at all. (P2) | 2f |
| Walking up like stairs and that like, I’ll always be in pain like in my legs…and just like my joints in general. (P1) | 2g |
| Pretty much everywhere. (P11) | 2h |
| Headaches, throat aches, stomach aches where I can’t eat for weeks um, I basically just get pain all over my body. (P12) | 2i |
| My skin, it’ll all really hurt and be sensitive so like, anything touching it will hurt. (P1) | 2j |
| (She finds) some things are very sensitive to touch and to brush some of [her] hair was very painful, because I think there’s certain things, when her skin just becomes more, um, more sensitive. (Father, P3) | 2k |
| I get [abdominal pain] if I’m nervous but sometimes it’s like not if I’m nervous because I’m run down. But it’s still like that similar pain to when you’re nervous. (P1) | 2l |
| Random to specific triggers for pain | |
| (Don’t)know what brings it on, it just happens. (P9) | 3a |
| It’s very random… And then one day I could go like barely even feeling it and like the next day it could be bad. (P8) | 3b |
| Is normally there, but it’s like, sometimes, it’ll just randomly show up if I do walking…and well, really any kind of sport as well. (P6) | 3c |
| My legs hurt but that’s cos…I’ve come back from school so I’m tired. (P11) | 3d |
| Tiredness definitely makes it a lot worse. (P2) | 3e |
| It’s more, prominent on days where I have to do like a lot in a day. (P11) | 3f |
| In the cold it gets really bad. (P4) | 3g |
| It just tends to hurt a lot more when I’m cold. (P6) | 3h |
| I have to shut my ears cos it’s too loud or, like the bright lights I find, like too much. (P4) | 3i |
| If there’s like, loud noises…or like big, like flashy lights, then that just makes it quite a lot worse. (P2) | 3j |