Pain

I want to talk about pain. Not emotional pain, but actual physical, neuropathic, chronic, nociceptive and any other type of pain. I have it all. Except for somatic pain. I don't think any of my issues are related to emotions other than that the pain causes me to experience emotions.

I have been in constant, chronic pain since 1999. It started with a bad knee. Surgery helped, but even after I was declared well and healed, the pain never went away completely. I feel as though I've been collecting painful places in my body ever since.

One of the reasons I stopped going to the gym was that the initial muscle soreness and expected aches never eased. The more I exercised, the worse I felt. I hired a trainer who determined there was nothing wrong with my routine, form, or technique. I talked to my primary care doctor who sent me to a rheumatologist. The rheumatologist told me to meditate, do yoga, and stop trying so hard to do life.

My doctor had sent me to the rheumatologist because he suspected I had fibromyalgia. I blanched at that suggestion for several reasons. Maybe ten years ago, my then-primary-care doctor told me that fibromylagia was just doctor code for depression or similar mental illness. He said that most illnesses that required diagnosis of exclusion were really just emotional problems the patient wasn't willing to deal with head-on.

Years later, another doctor, the cardiologist I wrote about on this blog once or twice, told me almost the exact same thing. He said that fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, both, were not physical illnesses at all, rather, they were physical manifestations of mental illness. He also said that they were largely named and then heavily marketed not by physicians or researchers but by pharmaceutical companies. I told him I doubted there was any validity to his belief and he countered with, and I quote, "Really? Then why do you think those 'illnesses' are treated almost exclusively with antidepressants? It's so doctors can get mentally ill patients who think the problem is physical or mechanical to accept the appropriate treatment for an emotional issue. That's also why meditation helps so much."

I feel like there are a lot of things medical professionals believe that may, in the end, stop ill people from getting appropriate, effective care. It's a lazy way to practice medicine.