I am not a medical doctor, so I don't know much about medicine. However, there is one thing I have learned just through life experience: Do. Not. Ever. Tell. A. Patient. It. Does. Not. Hurt.
My sister just came back from a bone marrow biopsy today. Naturally, the procedure is uncomfortable. However, the thing that really pisses me off is that once again, a doctor told her "it does not hurt." When she tried explaining that the last 9+ of these she has had have always hurt, the doctor said "well, we have better people, procedures, [take your pick of excuses]..." so "it does not hurt." Guess what. It HURTS! I have never had one, but hearing my sister's horror stories only makes me realize how lucky I am. I've heard stories of children being bound down to beds to keep them still as they scream during the procedure. My sister begged a doctor to "just kill her" during her first bone marrow biopsy. (She is totally not suicidal - multiple chemo courses and two back-to-back stem cell transplants make that clear.) Still, she is now sitting in her room upstairs, depressed that yet again another doctor has not listened to her, and instead chose to under medicate her. Combine this with the usual effects of multiple myeloma and overall discomfort of having had a medical procedure and you can guess that she, and my whole household, is fairly uncomfortable right now.
When my mother birthed me, the doctor told her that birthing me "did not hurt." Now that was some decades ago, but still, it was a 'toxic' pregnancy. I don't know what that means, but Mom's health was never the same afterward from all I've been told. A few years later she birthed my sister. Another pregnancy with complications, and after that, her doctors told her to never get pregnant again if she wanted to live.
The next time that Mom was in the hospital and the doctor told her something "did not hurt" was while she had terminal cancer.
My husband lives with chronic intractable pain. This set of terms refer to a) pain that won't go away with an operation or other existing procedure/technology, b) does not respond to 'interventional pain management' techniques, c) HURTS all the time. The state medical board recently shut down his doctor, along with others during the last few years. This is all related to "the war on drugs" and a lingering fear in the medical community that adequately addressing pain will put the patient in a drug-induced stupor. Local pain doctors now either shift practice (my husband's prior doc is now doing 'botox' cosmetic to stay in business), or hide within "interventional pain management."
So, this thing I've learned over my lifetime is that "it does not hurt" translates in doctor-speak to "I will not adequately control your pain." This may be motivated by genuine medical concern or a fear of being shut down, or whatever. Overall, it is fueled by a misunderstanding of pain management at both medical and policy levels. The American Pain Society is working on the National Pain Care Policy Act. The Pain Relief Network is my chosen cause on Facebook. Please check these sites out.
Thank you for listening to my rant.