There's an interesting book out called The Pain Chronicles, about pain research and patient experience, which I highly recommend.

Unfortunately for pain patients there is NO 'Pain Center' for the brain that science could just zap and turn it off, and no way to exactly and objectively quantify how much pain a person is feeling. And then, patients with exactly the same broken bone, where the doctors can identify the exact break, can have two subjectively different pain levels.

And worse: men get prescribed pain relief much more readily, and in much bigger doses relative to body size.

And worse: men get prescribed pain relief much more readily, and in much bigger doses relative to body size.

Being white doesn't hurt any either.

I can't read a short article about people's pain experience, so I don't think I could subject myself to an entire book without a breakdown. I'm interested in the facts, but can barely handle them...

Ha! The home health admin called to check up on what was going on, and she's a fucking yardie. You can be sure I identified myself as Jamaican, because as much as black women get the short end of the pain management stick, I am going to leverage the immigrant experience, the Caribbean immigrant experience, and quite specifically every shared Kingston moment I can to make myself a real person when I can.

(She had ackee and saltfish for breakfast--I am quite jealous...)

A friend of mine just had a scary because of her high tolerance for pain.

She gets an IUD. It's fine and then becomes uncomfortable. Calls the doc, they tell her discomfort is normal for six months blah blah. She feels like she can "feel" it. Calls them back. Normal. Finally she has no comfortable position to sit in, actually takes some Advil (which she never does), and feels warm anyway... so she goes to the ER.

It had shifted. It was infected. Her temperature was 103.5 The doctor who removed it didn't know how she was upright at all much less driving herself to the ER.

I was briefly INCENSED that her doctor hadn't listened to her in the first place but... this is a woman who took Tylenol after her root canal. Once. She's just not normal. She's fine and there's no permanent damage. But from now on if she feels ANYTHING from ANYTHING I'm going to be all "Go to the ER."

Yeah, § ita §, I doubt the book can tell you much that you haven't figured out from the inside. Since I deal with much lower-level chronic pain it was helpful to be able to put some conceptual parameters around my situation.

Pain threshold is one of those interesting dilemmas -- pain is one of the best warning systems we have, that when it works as it should it tells us "stop doing that" so you ignore it at your peril -- unless it's set way too low so that you're a princess with a pea under the mattresses.

(When MA finally gets around to instituting its medical marijuana law, I'm planning to see if I can try it, it sounds as though a small dose of THC might be an effective intervention for my fibromyalgia, because opiods are not a good solution. I don't need a firehose, I need something like a dry ice fire extinguisher.)

Many times, Hubby will medicate with booze, which worries me, considering how many opiates he's on, but a couple of shots of Barenjager hits the pain receptors the way all these drugs don't.

ION, I'm watching my lectures for the Global History of Architecture, and this professor is so delightfully giddy over megalithic dolmens. He's like a dog with a new bone as he shows the slides, and he's so disappointed that no one in the class seems to share his glee.

Trudy,

that has me shuddering with the hairs on my arms standing on end. oh no!

le nubian,

I sat here with my jaw dropped the entire time I was on the phone with her. I just keep reminding myself that she's ok.

It had me pondering the red head pain weirdness thing again. I thought it was just that they can need more anesthesia. Turns out is more like "climate change" than "global warming." It's not just one thing is out of whack, the whole system is fercockta - some pain is felt more, some less, medications are screwy... weird stuff.

And since she colors her hair its not obvious that something might be weird.

Pain threshold is one of those interesting dilemmas -- pain is one of the best warning systems we have, that when it works as it should it tells us "stop doing that" so you ignore it at your peril -- unless it's set way too low so that you're a princess with a pea under the mattresses.

There's a guy at work who was telling me proudly how quickly he was back on his feet after major surgery (they said weeks, he took hours), and then telling me how quickly he was back in for more foot surgery, and I couldn't but wonder--if he'd stayed down the first time, would he have had to have a second time?

In general, I ask the doctors if it's warning pain or "just for the hell of it" pain. So my ortho says now is "work through it" time, I work through. I will let him interpret. I do not afford the same to neuro or pain doc in regards to borkups like cervical facet syndrome or the frickfracking migraine.

And since she colors her hair its not obvious that something might be weird.

How much red is enough red? The coincidence between the transmission of faint ginger and migraines coming through the same familial pipes amuses me a bit.

I was introduced to pain doctors when I injured my knee in MI. The guy's face lit up when he did my general workup, when he saw some of the non-negative crossed wires I got going on. I felt like he might need to be restrained from fixing that wasn't broke, just to see if he could.

Nurse S came and went. There was some resistance to how we do what we do, but in the end,she mostly came out of it the same. I am not sure why the two other nurses leave me more nauseous with their administration of the last med, though.

there is a red head pain weirdness thing? WHOA

(/keanu)

.Oh god, apple butter. No way that's a failure. MMMM.

I made apple butter a couple of years ago and had it simmering on the stove for hours on super low temperature. So low that when I glanced at it to make sure it was off before going to bed - it wasn't.

When I woke up the next morning the house smelled awesome! And the cast iron pot had a half inch think layer of apple so hard candied that nothing I tried could soften it or pry it loose. Boiled for hours. Boiled with vinegar for hours. Chipped at it with a chef's knife. It was like fragrant titanium. Eventually had to throw out the pot.

That said, above the cement layer was some awesome apple butter. Even at the cement level there was no hint of burned to it.