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medpundit |
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Tuesday, September 05, 2006The specialists, most of them anyway, don't know what to do with me. Medical practice is all about snapshots: Measure the patient's condition, prescribe the treatment, then measure again. That approach works for static, on-off problems with easy fixes. But pain isn't static, it isn't on-off, and there are no easy fixes. Chronic pain is like a living, breathing thing with a mind and will of its own; it grows and moves and adapts. The snapshots--and most of the specialists--miss that. So each doctor clicks the shutter and applies the relevant specialty's preferred fix: this drug, that surgery, some new exercise program. Afterward, when I still hurt, they tend to get frustrated. That's usually when I'm diagnosed with Failed Patient Syndrome. But there's an upside, he says: Sometimes the pain itself seems to have medicinal value; it brings strange pleasures in its wake. Good food tastes better than it did before. ...Work feels more satisfying, even though it's much harder to do...For the first time, I know the satisfaction of doing the very best I can do. Pain gave me that. And pain gave me one more good thing: It taught me to live in the present, not the past and future. Despite the counted blessings, the piece still comes across as overwhelmingly pessimistic. And he admits that before the pain, he spent a lot of time focusing on "past regrets and future wants" rather than enjoying the here and now. Which leads to a question - do naturally pessimistic people experience more pain than the naturally optimistic? posted by Sydney on 9/05/2006 07:37:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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