They say that people who suffer from severe, chronic pain know how it can ruin and alter one's life. With chronic back pain it can make the simplest of daily activities hard to enjoy.
Until recently 'chronic pain' was not really accepted or understood within the medical profession.
They felt if you did not have an injury or disease then the pain may not be real and so they treated the underlying cause of the pain, believing that once the injury or disease was cured then obviously the chronic pain would go away.
Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way so some patients were told there was no treatment available for them or worse still, 'the pain must be in your head'.
With technology and better treatments for chronic pain you would not expect this type of treatment to still be going on but some doctors do still practice this manner with no sympathy for the patient who is in chronic pain.
I've seen many a doctor and specialist over the last 30 years and I experienced this on one occasion which still sticks in my mind.
This one such occasion was a visit to see a spinal consultant on one late miserable winters night. He was late for our appointment, very late in fact, his secretary said he had got delayed with an emergency.
I would never complain about a delay as I always think that if I was one of the 'emergency cases' they had to deal with, I would not like to think they are rushing to get back for another appointment.
Anyway, I digress, when he arrived he sat down with myself and my husband and asked me a few questions, I say a few as I had an awful lot I wanted to tell him, but was cut short and asked to disrobe and lie on his couch for him to check my reflexes and see where the pain was.
This was over with in a matter of seconds as was the rest of the appointment as while I was dressing he started talking to my husband about what he thought my problem was. 'She is rather obese', were his words, ' I feel sure if she lost a couple of stone, then all her pain would go away'...
I cried all the way home after feeling totally and utterly hurt, degraded and FAT!!! I can assure you if that had been my problem I would never have wasted anyone's time until I had lost some weight. Even my Doctor was in shock and extremely sympathetic. Friends said 'complain, complain, don't pay his bill, tell the local paper'. I just wanted to die, I'd never felt so awful.
Of course I did nothing about it except 'it' did something to me. It was a number of years before I could see anyone again about my back and so suffered greatly, it was a number of years before I could disrobe in front of anyone in the medical profession and to this day I prefer to be seen by a female doctor than a male.
Now the medical community do seem to be understanding that pain is no longer a function of a healthy nervous system (signalling that there is a disease or underlying injury),but that the chronic pain itself is the problem and needs to be treated as the main concern.
If I learnt one thing from my incident it was that no-one knows how much pain you are in except for yourself so its up to the individual to make sure he/she gets the right treatment.
Chronic pain is nothing like acute pain such as a broken leg or infection, but unfortunately there is no medical test to measure chronic pain levels so its up to you the patient to keep a diary of your pain to explain to your doctor. A typical example of this was when I had my first epidural and the consultant asked me to keep a diary of my pain and to bring it back when I went for my follow up appointment.
After looking through my diary he diagnosed me as also suffering from Fibromyalgia and sent me straight to see a Rheumatologist, which without my diary is something he would never had diagnosed.
Everyone experiences pain differently but if you don't get the right treatment then your pain will never go away. I am now fortunate enough to have a lovely female doctor who is very very understanding of the type of pain I live with and will do anything to help me deal with it. I also have an amazing 'male' pain consultant who also treats me gently and has a very understanding manner to him, so I'm one of the lucky ones now but I'm sure some slip through the net.
They say that people who suffer from severe, chronic pain know how it can ruin and alter one's life. With chronic back pain it can make the simplest of daily activities hard to enjoy.
Until recently 'chronic pain' was not really accepted or understood within the medical profession.
They felt if you did not have an injury or disease then the pain may not be real and so they treated the underlying cause of the pain, believing that once the injury or disease was cured then obviously the chronic pain would go away.
Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way so some patients were told there was no treatment available for them or worse still, 'the pain must be in your head'.
With technology and better treatments for chronic pain you would not expect this type of treatment to still be going on but some doctors do still practice this manner with no sympathy for the patient who is in chronic pain.
I've seen many a doctor and specialist over the last 30 years and I experienced this on one occasion which still sticks in my mind.
This one such occasion was a visit to see a spinal consultant on one late miserable winters night. He was late for our appointment, very late in fact, his secretary said he had got delayed with an emergency.
I would never complain about a delay as I always think that if I was one of the 'emergency cases' they had to deal with, I would not like to think they are rushing to get back for another appointment.
Anyway, I digress, when he arrived he sat down with myself and my husband and asked me a few questions, I say a few as I had an awful lot I wanted to tell him, but was cut short and asked to disrobe and lie on his couch for him to check my reflexes and see where the pain was.
This was over with in a matter of seconds as was the rest of the appointment as while I was dressing he started talking to my husband about what he thought my problem was. 'She is rather obese', were his words, ' I feel sure if she lost a couple of stone, then all her pain would go away'...
I cried all the way home after feeling totally and utterly hurt, degraded and FAT!!! I can assure you if that had been my problem I would never have wasted anyone's time until I had lost some weight. Even my Doctor was in shock and extremely sympathetic. Friends said 'complain, complain, don't pay his bill, tell the local paper'. I just wanted to die, I'd never felt so awful.
Of course I did nothing about it except 'it' did something to me. It was a number of years before I could see anyone again about my back and so suffered greatly, it was a number of years before I could disrobe in front of anyone in the medical profession and to this day I prefer to be seen by a female doctor than a male.
Now the medical community do seem to be understanding that pain is no longer a function of a healthy nervous system (signalling that there is a disease or underlying injury),but that the chronic pain itself is the problem and needs to be treated as the main concern.
If I learnt one thing from my incident it was that no-one knows how much pain you are in except for yourself so its up to the individual to make sure he/she gets the right treatment.
Chronic pain is nothing like acute pain such as a broken leg or infection, but unfortunately there is no medical test to measure chronic pain levels so its up to you the patient to keep a diary of your pain to explain to your doctor. A typical example of this was when I had my first epidural and the consultant asked me to keep a diary of my pain and to bring it back when I went for my follow up appointment.
After looking through my diary he diagnosed me as also suffering from Fibromyalgia and sent me straight to see a Rheumatologist, which without my diary is something he would never had diagnosed.
Everyone experiences pain differently but if you don't get the right treatment then your pain will never go away. I am now fortunate enough to have a lovely female doctor who is very very understanding of the type of pain I live with and will do anything to help me deal with it. I also have an amazing 'male' pain consultant who also treats me gently and has a very understanding manner to him, so I'm one of the lucky ones now but I'm sure some slip through the net.