How do You deal with chronic pain

I appreciate all of the excellent points that the posters make. Living with chronic pain is an experience that no one can understand unless they have lived through it. And no matter what anyone says, there is discrimination against people with chronic conditions and those who take pain medication. People do see you as lazy, pathetic, destitute, insolvent, depressing, ugly, needy, helpless, a burden. They think you are a victim because you did something wrong, brought it on yourself: they would have done it better, been more competent. The insensitivity is incredible. When I go to a new pharmacy with a prescription for morphine, they always give me a hard time. I actually had a laboratory physician say to me, "No wonder you are so happy all the time." Give me a break! People say, "You are so lucky, you go to physical therapy." First of all the p.t. is extremely painful. Second, when I get up in the morning, I know I must go to p.t. for four hours and if I do not, I will pass out all day. How, exactly, am I lucky? When I got my wheelchair accessible van my sister actually said to my mom, "She is so lucky." Like I would drive this big bulky thing if I had a choice. But actually, when I was hurt 30 years ago it was a lot worse with pain medication. I was in the hospital with patients many times who were screaming and screaming for pain medication. An obnoxious, abusive nurse would come in and call him an addict and tell him he will get medication "when it is time, now shut up". It happened! I would suffer, because I did not want to be treated like that. But it is true that most doctors are still backward about relieving pain in a sufferer. They are obsessed with liability and state statistics and if a mistake will impact their record. On one level you cannot blame them because of people who are abusing prescriptions and defrauding insurers. Those people make it hard for me and you. Doctors need to be better educated to recognize real conditions and more up to date on the research on relief of pain. It is proven that if pain is adequately relieved directly after surgery the patient heals better and recovers faster. Insurance companies could actually save money by treating patients appropriately in the first place. As far as the 1 to 10 scale, I agree that it is absurd, obnoxious and insulting. I would ask the questioner, "On a scale of one to ten how adequately do you think you are treating my condition?" If a doctor or nurse asks me that, I answer, "20". It is up to us as patients to stand up for ourselves. When I counsel a person on his disability, I tell him/her, when you have a chronic illness it is like running a business. You must manage it yourself or you lose. Your illness is your responsibility. You make the ultimate decisions. You must educate yourself to the options, research, learn. Do not turn yourself over blindly to another to save you. Because, let's face it, if your doctor makes a mistake, he goes home at the end of the day. But you must live with his mistake forever. Unfortunately, most of us have been abused, misdiagnosed and irreparably injured by medical personnel in the course of our chronic condition. I have spinal cord injury with severe autonomic dysfunction and I am in agony 24/7. I take morphine because it is the only medication that takes the edge off my pain. but I made the decision to stay at the same level of dosage. I need oxygen to breathe. I use alternate means of treatment to augment conventional therapies, such as focusing, meditation, biofeedback, water tapes, cinema therapy, and poetry therapy. When the pain is intolerable, I get in a warm bathtub for 6 to 8 hours. When I am in the water I do not hurt. The only problem is I have no temperature discrimination, so when I am in a hot tub, it feels like it is ice cold. The only time I feel relief is when I am in water or in traction. I do what I can do when I can, and when I can't, I must stay in bed all day. Then I have a list of things I do from bed, on the phone, on the computer, on the internet, watching classic movies, zillions of things planned out for those times. I will not feel sorry for myself. I accept myself and what I can do and what I am. I am enough. We must accept ourselves and deal with our life, or how can we expect others to accept us. My young son once asked me what it is like to live with my condition. I told him it is like living with a knife in your arm. You know it is there. It hurts like hell, but you go on, because because what other choice do you have. If you are reading this, please remember, everyone who lives with chronic pain, when he/she wakes up in the morning, makes a conscious decision to go on. Would you have the courage to do the same?

Since you can't see spinal cord damage, fibromyalgia, and other disorders that cause chronic pain people often treat you badly. A broken arm will get you sympathy and understanding. A broken neck (herniated disc) will not because it doesn't show. The government is the last thing we want involved in medicine. We need more education on TV and pamphlets, etc. I have coined another condition that goes along with chronic pain - Pain Brain Drain. It's hard to control pain and think clearly. You can only spread yourself so thin. People need to know we are working hard to deal with constant agony. I am most certainly addicted to morphine. I am addicted to oxygen, water, foods and air temperature above freezing and below scalding. Some diabetics are addicted to insulin, some people addicted to heart medications. Pain tells our mind our body is in danger. In my case it is nerve damage - there is no danger and I am aware that certain pain will not cause anything else to happen. That does not make it hurt any less. I control what I can through concentration and other learned techniques, but some pain is so severe it takes away your thought processing. We need more realistic guidelines to guage pain and allocate medications. The smily face pain from 1 to 10 is an insult, I live with 7 as a constant. Find the right doctor is the most important thing you can do. Jump through their hoops, one time only for each hoop. Once you've done the 3 epidurals allowed per year with inadequate results do not do them again. Once you do accupuncture without relief, stop. We do have a stigma, and the only way around it is to prove what does not work. We have to prove, while struggling with horrible pain, that each option they offer does or does not work. Then it is obvious we are serious and we have tried everything short of addictive pain killers. Thus anyone who had denied you medication is committing serious infractions. We do not totally kill all the pain; we tolerate as much as we can so our bodies do not shut down production of our natural endorphins. Pain beyond that is subjecting us to merciless agony which does not follow doctor's oath and ethics.

If you're in serious pain and you're doctor won't prescribe any pain medication, s/he should be reported. You could also change your doctor until you find the right one, or go to the hospital in the meantime. If a hospital refuses to give you anything for pain, then I'd go to another and another until I'm treated properly.

well i am in the same boat as you are. i suffer from chronic pain in my knees. i take high doses of ibprofen which dont really help. you do what you have to do. people are afraid of what they dont know so they belittle the people that they see as a threat.

If your doctors does not specialize in pain management then it is very unlikely that your chronic pain will get the treatment for relief that you need. Most doctors are really clueless when it comes to treating chronic pain. I think one factor being that they just don't understand it, and there are not enough medical studies on the effects of it and the needs of how it should be treated. All I know is that it effects your entire life and it is not an easy situation to deal with.

No kidding there's a stigma attached to chronic pain - especially if you're a woman. But men go through it too, especially with back pain. In my experience, it took six years to find an effective pain treatment for just one of my physical problems. If it hadn't been for a lecture on pain relief that my doctor attended I don't think I'd be here today. My doctor presented my case to the lecturer and he suggested the treatment that I've been on for the last ten years. Even though I'm using a narcotic regularly, I have never been 'high' nor irresponsible in its' use. But, I don't see the government doing anything about chronic pain in the near future, not when most doctors don't know what to do about it - especially in the U.S. It will take at least one powerful doctor to get things moving in that direction as well as a group of outspoken patients.

I have very minor chronic pain in my knees as a result of some surgeries as kid. Mostly, it's managed with over the counter stuff, escalating to Tylenol with codine about once a month.

Yes. I have trouble getting my meds. It seems like a lot of people who can't possibly be in as much pain as I am get meds real easy, but I don't know how or why. I have to see my doctor every month, fill out papers every visit, spend a lot of money on tests. All of this and the pills only work about 1/4 as long as they're supposed to. I have more, but not sure what your experience is. All I know is I have terrible pain most of the time, and it's nearly impossible to work, but I have no choice.