Flippy - I Rant, You Read

Monday, May 17, 2010

mid-afternoon

Study Finds Severe Chronic Pain Increases Death By 68%

While this study isn’t a big surprise to people who live with chronic pain, I’m sure it’s a surprise to those who don’t.  What I liked best about the posting of this study though, is the comments.  When you grow up being Jewish, you kind of feel like you’re a member of a small group who either knows each other or at least knows someone who knows someone else, and then somehow you feel semi-related.  It was the same when I realized I was gay.  It’s the same small group around the world who understands what your life experiences might have been.  Well, now we’re part of the chronic pain group, and the comments on the study are like comments we could’ve written ourselves.  I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so difficult to find people who could empathize with people who are in pain, day in and day out, but it really is hard to find them in your regular everyday life.  People often think you should suck it up or quit complaining or they think it can’t be that bad…and those are the people you want to magically feel that chronic pain for at least a couple of weeks, where you feel like it’s never going to go away.  Everyone knows what acute pain feels like, but most people just heal from that pain and move on, never thinking that other people are in that kind of pain every single day.  So, anyway, the commenters on the study are more of “my people”, like Jewish people and gay people and, well, people who think Joss Whedon is genius or that Siobhan Magnus should’ve won this season of American Idol.

I’m not going to quote from the study.  If you’re interested, you’ll go to the link and read it.  If you’re not interested, you’ll skip over anything I quoted anyway.  However, knowing what chronic pain (and fatigue) has done to my life, I’m not at all surprised that people with chronic pain die sooner than those without.  Some of those deaths, I’m sure, include suicide.  I’m one of the lucky ones who has found a pain management doctor who isn’t afraid of pain meds and understands that people can take opioids responsibly, without getting addicted and without getting high.  Like one of the commenters said, our pain meds DON’T make us high, they go straight to the pain receptors and work there.  I can honestly say that I’ve never been high from my opioids.  Not once.  The meds either work and relieve the pain without any sort of high or they do absolutely nothing. (Opioids Relieve Pain with Little Addiction Risk - and when they say “little addiction risk”, they mean it - .27%, yes, point two seven percent, as in way less than 1%) Oh, and the very first time I had my dosage increased, they made me incredibly nauseous and I, uh, lost those pills very shortly after I took them, if you know what I mean.  The sewer system full of anti-depressants suddenly had some pain meds added to their mix.  You know what drug made me high (for a few days anyway)?  Lyrica.  I was woozy and had to hold onto the railing when going up and down the stairs.  Lyrica also made my feet swell like balloons and made me fall asleep at the drop of a, well, anything.  And, Lyrica didn’t do diddly for my Fibromyalgia, so I quit taking it after a month or two of very unpleasant side effects.  The “high” was gone after a couple of days, and it ws also an unwelcome high.  I just wanted pain relief and I wasn’t getting it from Lyrica.  I’m glad Lyrica helps some FM sufferers, but I’m not one of them.  It just gives me Fred Flintstone feet and doesn’t allow my shoes to fit.  It was a lot of money to pay for a drug that made me sleepy and swollen.  I’m glad that I’ve found a combination of medications that help me feel somewhat better.  Unfortunately, they don’t make me feel like the old me - I’m still in pain and I’m still exhausted.  But, at least the pain is more manageable, because if I didn’t have any pain management, I wouldn’t be sticking around and hoping for an answer to both the pain and the fatigue.  I’d be one of 68%.  I know that for a while, I had high blood pressure, which had never been a problem for me.  It’s fine now, so I assume it was during an extra bad pain/fatigue period.

I still think Siobhan Magnus should’ve won American Idol.  I think she got kicked off based on some of that fine print that allows the producers to do whatever they want with the voting results.