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Tag Archives: chronic pain
Dump the 1-10 Pain Scale for the “Netflix” Scale
When you suffer from chronic pain, the 1-10 pain scale is a joke. (Rate your pain from nothing to your worst ever, from 1-10, in case your fortunate enough not to be familiar with it.)
In reality, that scale is a joke anyway because it’s totally subjective. Someone’s ten might be someone else’s five. In fact, this ridiculous scale is part of what makes it so hard for chronic pain patients to “prove” we’re really in such significant pain. When you’re in pain all the time, especially when you’re in a situation like mine in which the pain level doesn’t vary much, asking me to rate it is kind of like asking for me to tell you what my leg feels like without touching it with my hands. It’s just there. Always there. I can’t rate how “present” my leg is in a practical way. One of my friends with chronic pain jokingly said that every time she’s asked to rate her pain it feels like she’s taking a test she’s about to fail.
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Betrayal: My Doctor Ignored My Chronic Pain
“Do no harm,” is part of the oath that all medical students must take. It’s supposed to be an essential part of being a doctor–to not do any injury to their patients. But it’s a sad fact that too many doctors forget that by ignoring or not treating their patients’ pain, they’re actually doing just that–harm. And not only is untreated chronic pain detrimental to a patient’s health and quality of life, it also affects them emotionally.
I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with doctors as I have several health conditions, but recently, I had perhaps my worst.
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Posted in Blog
Tagged Bad experience, chronic pain, do no harm, NPDH, Pain management
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Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend: An Update
I don’t talk about myself much, especially what really goes on in the depths of my mind, except for what comes out in my writing. Kai and I are a lot alike in that way, although he sometimes is more open than I am as my way of expressing things I feel I can’t in real life for a lot of reasons. But I felt like I needed to update you all on what’s going on with me, so here I am, baring my soul a little. It’s scary, but life is scary, and I’ve already shared as much as I have already, so why not? It may also help you to understand more of where I’m coming from in the next section of In/Exhale.
