Journey of a Thousand Pricks Starts with but a Single Poke
April 7, 2008 by Lemur King
Some of you have known that over a year ago I was rear-ended (rather, my car was hit, by another car, while I was in it, McGoo) and then hit the car in front of me. Since that time, my activities have been severely curtailed. Lots of painful procedures, chronic pain in general, couple trips to the hospital for out-of-control pain, etc.
To date, no doctor or specialist has come up with an answer that worked beyond about three weeks, and some didn’t work at all. In short, if someone offers to hit you, JUST SAY NO.
Several things happened after many, many visits to doctors:
- You become disillusioned - Doctor’s don’t know everything. They don’t even know what they don’t know, so in that respect they are just like the rest of us
- You become unwilling to hope - After just so many “treatments” that promise pain and little else that could be considered a tangible deliverable, you lower your expectations
- You become bitter - Whatever did you do to merit this?
- You feel isolated - unless you have been there, it’s hard to picture what the chronic pain sufferer is going through. It messes with your head in the most unimaginable ways, being restricted to just lying or sitting around while the rest of the world is outside talking with each other, getting things done, going places, etc. Doctors hear the words but cannot feel the emotions
- You feel guilty - as if it were your fault you were not better. Some doctors help foster this subconsciously
- You get tired - Ground down by trying to live a normal life, hold down a job, fulfill familial obligations, meet appointments, make up lost time at work, and deal with pain throughout
Today, I have an appointment at 1pm with (drum roll, please)… an acupuncturist.
This will be a good test because even though I am hopeful, I don’t actually believe in acupuncture any more than I believe in brain-tumor healing performed by practitioners of the chiropractic arts. (yes, I know “oh ye of little faith”)
If it can work in SPITE of my skepticism, then it passes a critical test and after 3000 years one billion Chinese folks can all breathe a collective sigh of relief as their methods are validated by your ever-so-humble gweilo.
Wish me luck. I’m sure you’ll be on pins and needles (as I am soon to be) to find out the results.
- LK
Good luck with it! I really hope you get some relief buddy. I had back pain problems in High School and yea did it suck mightily.
I’m going to put a link on this post to another page, which will keep a running updates list. This isn’t an egocentric thing, this is more out of pure curiosity. I walked into it with no belief in ‘puncture whatsoever and am clinically interested in the firsthand results.
And thanks for the well-wishes. This is so very freakin’ old. I’m tired of living on vicodin and more. It’s cutting into my dream, which is to ride from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific ocean on a bicycle.
I wish you good luck, you need to have head up all that …
just say … Don’t worry be happy … 
Good luck !!!
Luck. I think the base problem is that pain isn’t measurable. Weird that something so powerful can’t be graphed, but there it is.
If it could, I suspect it would be taken more seriously.
Weas - that is exactly the problem. A lot of people get hung up on “well so and so said they’re only on a 6 pain-scale-wise” or “Well they hurt and are getting along fine”.
Thing is, you can try to peg numbers and you can try to compare individuals, but ultimately it is what it is.
In the 80’s my mom had severe pain and at that time they were rather cruel about it. They assumed that if you said you were in pain you were looking for pills (how they expected to help anyone is beyond me). So for years with excruciating pain from nerve damage that they couldn’t see on x-rays, they gave her one (1) tylenol-3 per day. Finally at some point in the early 90’s they started realizing that maybe, just maybe, some of these people in pain weren’t faking it.
I’ve been to the hospital twice after it was so bad for 12 hours or so that I was crying, moaning, and punched numerous holes in walls. When you hit that stage they pretty much realize that you are not looking for a fix, you’re looking for a reason not to kill yourself. Luckily it’s been manageable otherwise. Not great, but manageable.
Now there approach is - if the person is in pain, we ought to be taking that seriously.