Is It Acceptable To Test Chronic Pain Sufferers

[daredtowork]

42. well

I was baffled by the fact that my doctor was doing nothing about the pain component of my symptoms when I was on welfare, and it seemed to me that the role of the doctor was to make the patient feel better and to try to do something that might enable them to become more active and get back to work. Pain is a big obstacle to functioning in everyday life - even getting up in the morning! I was all the more frustrated because I had an underlying genetic condition that made it inadvisable to take over-the-counter pain relievers (not that I could buy them with $0 cash income - see my welfare post).

Anyway, I understand the point about opiates and narcotics. If a person is falling asleep or otherwise not mentally present, they aren't going to be able to function in the mainstream world either. I'm definitely not advocating that approach. But doctors should also understand that acupuncture and "more exercise" talks don't work either when there are physiological sources of pain going on.

Again, doctors need to understand they are at the service of the patient. They are supposed to be doing something for the patient.

While researching why a particular drug I have been taking suddenly stopped working on this refill, I came across a statement that doctors loved to use this drug because it often worked on patients "whining about vague symptoms". WHAT THE HECK IS THAT ATTITUDE???!!! You mean patients who have been painfully dragging themselves into the doctor's office for years while the doctor will only listen to one symptom at a time and refuse to make a solid diagnosis while they are less and less able to work and end up on welfare? Is that the "whiners" we are talking about here? Those "vague symptoms" are symptoms of SOMETHING that cannot be diagnosed by one-symptom-at-a-time visits: and if this particular medication works on it, that something was probably neurological in origin and the patient was "whining" about something physiologically very real. So f' you and the high horse you rode in on for torturing your "whining" patients with "vague symptoms" for god knows how many years Mr. High And Mighty Doctor.

Can we agree there are some doctors who just suck out there? And when they get on the "all patients are potential addicts" bandwagon, they forget their job is to actual treat patients and use a couple brain cells to think about what's wrong with their patients. And we, the patients, need to stop paying the rubes who think their only job is to look down on us and make lifestyle speeches.