as small as a world and as large as alone

10:11am August 3, 2015

fogwithwheels:

ifihavethespoons:

here is what i don’t understand:

if an average healthy person is in a lot of pain and this pain is temporary but excruciating, their doctors, ER or otherwise, will give them strong medication, usually narcotics, whose strength will match the pain felt.

but when someone with chronic pain experiences pain above and beyond their normal everyday pain and this extra pain is temporary and excruciating, their doctors will give them weak medication, rarely narcotics, that the patient takes on a regular basis for less excruciating circumstances.

now if the chronic pain patient asks the doctors for something stronger, the doctors discourage them.  they say things like ‘it’s dangerous to get used to narcotics.’ or ‘you can’t rely on narcotics for chronic pain.’

we chronic pain patients are forced to deal with more pain than the average healthy person everyday.  but why does that disqualify me from receiving adequate treatment when my pain level goes above my extremely high tolerance?

the doctors need to respect us.  we have more experience dealing with our pain than they do.

the only time in my life I went to the ER for pain related reasons, they told me I was in too much pain for pain meds

I got a short lecture on the dangers of addiction, and was then discharged after being told I needed tests they weren’t going to do

I’ve been really lucky – my doctor is so well-known as an amazing doctor around these parts, that I’ve had them reading his name on my chart completely turn around the course of emergency room visits.  Like once I went in there with really bad neck pain and inability to move my head in certain ways.  They treated me like a drug seeker until they heard his name.  Then they called him out of bed, got his opinion on what was going on, gave me IV pain meds, and started trying to rule out any emergency-related reasons for the neck problem, which turned out to be (as far as anyone could tell) a complication of hypermobility.  I now receive injections in my neck every three months that keep the pain at bay.

But I know a lot of people aren’t so lucky.  (And while my doctor’s name convinced them I was not a drug seeker, my doctor’s name is unfortunately not a universal “get them to take everything seriously” card, it’s just a “sie’s clearly not here for drugs, or he’d have warned us” card.)

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