Many folks have a hard time understanding chronic pain. I did too until I suffered from it for a period of 6 months. I injured my neck and my right arm went numb. The pain from my neck down to my finger tips was a constant 10 out of 10, 24/7, even in my sleep. There was no amount of pain killers that would help.
I freaked out my whole family telling them that if it doesn't go away I don't think I can make it. There was a point where I got an axe and asked my wife to hack my arm off at the shoulder. Miraculously, it finally healed somehow and I just remember thinking how wonderful it felt to have a second chance at life.
I understand now why people with chronic pain want to end their lives. For some poor souls it seems like the only way to get rest/peace from the constant and exhausting pain.
I absolutely do not want to minimize your experience, but I also want to point out that pain doesn't have to be excruciating to be life changing. Even 1 out of 10 pain can make it harder to concentrate or sleep, and, without proper management, can be debilitating. Chronic excruciating pain is, of course, oh so much worse. But even mild pain, when it extends out across months and years and decades, is not something you can appropriately manage by just rubbing some tough on it.
I do not want to minimize your experience either, as somebody suffering from chronic pain for the past two years myself.
Chronic pain sensitizes you further, having this awareness helps you deal with your condition better. I highly recommend reading the following article.
I know a girl, my 'Viking friend' that landed upside down with a tractor on top of her. Just about everything that could be broken was broken. She ended up a thrill seeker because anything that would have killed her was also a blessing in disguise. Constant chronic pain at the maximum of what you are able to endure and live. The choice: painkillers and zoned out, unable to do much of anything or no painkillers, continuously in pain but at least conscious. She eventually learned how to deal with it, found a job that took her all over the world and is now happily married. One very impressive person.
It does reach a point that living is worse than death.
Had a similar final. Intentionally became a lunatic at ER.
Refused to take prescribed blood thinner, which is a quick death for me.
They finally listened and gave me a different one.
Life drastically improved after that’s.
Highly relatable. I've never considered taking my own life, but there were certainly moments where I thought "i need to get this fixed, i cannot live this way for the rest of my life".
People put way to much trust in doctors. I have family members we are clearly suffering exact same issues I have. I keep telling them to go ask for X,Y & Z test.
Everyone of them as assured me their doctors don’t see any reason to run those tests. Then they complain about how hard life is.
Trusting "Experts" is a pandemic. We see it everywhere. They ubiquitous "They say..."
Trust economists that we can print trillions and its fine.
Trust military the war is "almost over".
Trust politicians that they will fix our problems.
Trust teachers to teach our kids (Teachers need parents support at home!).
Trust Coaches to teach our players (you gotta play catch at home to be good at baseball!).
Trust doctors...
trust priests...
trust police...
You have a good point, blind trust is never good. Should not be downvoted imho.
Sadly, it seems that the majority of people who start researching things on their own often arrive to completely wrong conclusions. And that's dangerous, for them and for everyone else.
An economist, for example, would have years of information and training in the field. And that forms a knowledge base in their brain that's (mostly) accurate, so anything they research and learn will be more correct than what an electrician/programmer/politician by trade would find.
To put it simply, they have more information and experience.
Of course, there are exceptions, some people are smart and can run circles around experts, but as I said, the majority of people are likely to arrive at the wrong conclusions.
I don't know how this could be fixed, perhaps more oversight and checks over the experts (many cases where people are just winging it or are complete frauds). But going off on your own and not trusting experts at all is a bad idea.
It could be that a lot of other professions don't have the same reflection rate as scientific areas.
In science and engineering, we are constantly being forced into realization that we were wrong, and we constantly try to fix things where the fix is just yet another problem we created.
I mean, even if you can code for 20 years, if anybody asks you whether you can program or not, you'll probably answer "nope I don't know anything about programming"... and that's a sign for an experienced person in that profession.
On the other hand, a lot of professions can get lucky with social camouflage, where they can blame others and it doesn't stick out for a controlling person. A lot of people that made it this way never were forced into reflecting on their bad decisions.
An ENT doctor recently told me antibiotics don't cause tinnitus.
The doctor at the covid plasma donation center sent my wife home because her clearly labeled "positive" (1.4 threshold, my wife's result was 4.9, but the doctor wanted a minimum of "80") test was too low for plasma donation -- it was not, the doctor was talking about a different quantitative test. After 8 months of people donating covid plasma, this doctor had no clue. It makes my blood boil thinking how many other people didn't donate plasma because of this idiot-- I sent my wife back and told her to make a big fuss and ask for another doctor, who actually explained the idiot doctor my wife can absolutely donate plasma, they just ran different kind of tests, and my wife's test result was more than likely meeting their own required antibody levels.
This was not a medical issue, it was a common sense issue -- if her test had a positive threshold level of 1.4 and she had a 4.9 result, how could this doctor not realize something was wrong with her requiring a value of "80". Did she actually think that only Chuck Norris can donate covid plasma?
My psychiatrist bullshitted me about the mechanism of action of some meds she was prescribing (I knew because I looked them up as treatment options beforehand) -- she did prescribe the "correct" medicine as far as I remember, but she just did not know the correct mechanism of action.
The infectious dissease specialist in my hospital stay for COVID-19 told me the hydroxychloroquine she was giving me was a proven anti-viral medication that worked really well in their national acclaimed hospital. Again, she was really clueless, she was just following protocol, she could at least have shut her mouth if she was clueless.
They only gave hydroxychloroquine to otherwise healthy individuals because or cardiac issues the medicine was known to cause, OF COURSE those patients had really good outcomes, they were otherwise healthy, young individuals.
My wife is a dentist, she really likes her surgeon boss and his approach of telling patients the true odds of success of certain procedures and what to realistically expect out of them. But a lot of patients don't like that. They want to hear the doctor has a 100% success rate with every procedure and that all his dental implants last a lifetime.
So part of the problem is the public that will choose a lying, perhaps clueless doctor with a god complex above an honest doctor that really knows his stuff and is honest and upfront with his patients.
Had similar, had a severe reaction to the newer class blood thinners.
Nurse at hematologists swore up and down that no one has reactions to it. Studies all prove that. Called me a liar.
Well started dealing with other specialist because I was having severe problems due to this medication.
Vascular and others all gave me warnings as they had been seeing a lot of problems.
I found out the studies were done mostly in China, and were suspect.
Hematologist let me know I wasn’t allowed to come in because I wanted to switch. Mocked me for looking things up.
I had not taken it in 3 days and was already losing vision. So waiting months for another practice was a death sentence.
That was my breaking point. Stopped being Mr. polite.
First time I ever screamed and threatened a lawsuit.
Got my new medication. Life got better.
Also yeah antibiotics definitely can have a powerful effect.
Oddly I was diagnosed correctly due to how I responded to certain antibiotics.
I freaked out my whole family telling them that if it doesn't go away I don't think I can make it. There was a point where I got an axe and asked my wife to hack my arm off at the shoulder. Miraculously, it finally healed somehow and I just remember thinking how wonderful it felt to have a second chance at life.
I understand now why people with chronic pain want to end their lives. For some poor souls it seems like the only way to get rest/peace from the constant and exhausting pain.