I've been an RN for almost 20 years.

[tavalon]

225. I have a similar story

I had a work injury (nurse also). It was a C5 bulge which actually caused extreme pain in my left arm. I was in physical therapy for the injury and was complaining to the therapist that no pain meds, including one's for neuropathic pain, were working and that it was really wearing me down. He suggested I see the acupuncturist they employed. He said it wouldn't be covered by Workman's Comp but it might help. I had doubts but I was just worn out from the non-stop pain.

So I went. I walked out of there pain free. No, it didn't last forever but I kept going and as my injury subsided, the pain eased on it's own with the good sound science of PT. I neither believed nor disbelieved in acupuncture, it was just something that never occurred to me.

Oh, the same clinic offered me B12 shots and I took them, though I wondered what the mechanism was. I found out later that it seems to have some effect on neuropathic injuries. But I didn't find that out until I was back at work, so it might as well have been woo. I was interested in any and all possible treatments as I didn't want to live with that pain and I really wanted to get back to nursing.

This giant woo storm (where the hell did this come from?) stems from black and white thinking and is very limiting. Yeah, some of the stuff is crap and some of it is wonderful and the unwillingness to look beyond a certain box is an unfortunate thing I've seen a lot of here on DU lately.

I'm kind of an oddball as a medical professional. Most of us strongly believe in our religion and we call it science, but it's really just tales handed down, not all that different from wives tales, many of which have become the bedrock of medical tales, whether true or not. Alas, 13 years ago, I lost my religion - I even remember posting a livejournal with that title. Luckily I didn't lose the love of my calling, I just realized the veneer was nothing more than wizard of oz stuff.

I'm especially amused by the "new" buzz phrase "Evidence based medicine". It kind of tacitly admits what I've known for more than half of my career as a nurse. The things we do in medicine are just the things that were taught to us by our mentors who received their things from............ Science? Nah. Lore.