It's different, but as an example, I injured my back (i don't really even know how) and was in intense pain for approximately 8 months. You know that feeling when you burn your hand on something? It normally last 5-15 minutes, well it was like that, but inside my lower spine all the time, for a solid 4 months...and then in duller state for another 4. I am still struggling with pain from time to time, but i'm once again able to sleep a full night (something i couldn't do for around 5-6 months), do physical things and not regret every movement. At the start of the injury, i was probably the fittest I've ever been, but now i'm probably the least fit i've ever been. It's seriously sucked. Who am I kidding, it still sucks...coughing hurts...but its improving and that gives me hope that one day it'll be 'normal' again.
Until you've had a long term injury, you have no idea how to sympathize. Right in the middle of this i had a close friend get upset with me that I came over when I knew he was painting, and didn't offer to help. I was frustrated he even considered it a possibility, i was struggling to sit in a car for more than an hour, how was I going to paint a wall or ceiling? People just don't understand.
To everyone suffering with something that inhibits their ability to enjoy life, i'm sorry but wish you the best. To everyone looking in from the outside, assume its 10x worse than what you see and reconsider your next move.
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.
https://www.painscience.com/articles/pain-is-weird.php
And as Dave Chappelle says -
Got to find a way to find joy in your existence in spite of that feeling.
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.
If it was a machine with problems, I'd just set it to generate a report/warning once in a while and not waste energy probing the sensors every second.
Remind me once every few hours that yes, my back and knees are still fucked (doctors' advice: just live with it...oook).
I don't need it 24/7 (OK subtract a few hours when sleeping without waking up because of it), it's literally pointless.
Blows my mind.
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...
The list goes on...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Down to 1-3 most of the time. But took years of trial and error, and so many mistakes to get here.
For me weightlifting is about staying in shape for things like mountain adventures, feeling great, looking good. But Arnold-look is a silly goal for long term wellness, and so are the methods to get there. Once I stopped pushing the numbers and focused on more repetitions, I never had any injury. That's worth much more than some momentary number of kilos/pounds you did today - nobody will care about that tomorrow, but injuries remain, sometimes forever.
https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/pain-in-training-what-d...
https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/movement-variability-sh...
These are the two stretches that help me the most.
Highly recommend going through bob and Brad, and Dr Jo on YouTube. I try stuff all the time and have regained much of my mobility.
- Prone Press Up (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sws_GwrlYO0): Relieves tension in lower back, pressing discs back towards their natural position.
- Banded Hamstring Stretches (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxQR56U7sI): You can use a belt for this if you don't have the bands, but properly and consistently stretching my hamstrings was the biggest thing I did to relieve (and 'cure') my back pain after the herniation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI
He runs through them pretty fast, but someone in the comments recommended playing it at 0.75x speed and that works great.
Finally, I had one of those injections directly on my spine and it was like magic. I walked into the appointment and couldn't stand up straight and walked out like I had never been hurt. For weeks, I would wake up each morning and dread getting out of bed because I wondered would this be the morning the pain came back.
It's been years now, and knock on wood, I hope to never have a problem again. I was always a weight lifter, but stopped powerlifting (maxing things like DLs), and stopped playing basketball. I still exercise a lot, but my entire focus now is on longevity. Strength is still a key component, but so is flexibility and learning proper movement.
BUT....
Last year I had another herniated disc triggered by axing down a tree. This time it was really bad. I spent two months in debilitating pain unable to move or really do much of anything. Couldn't stand, couldn't walk, couldn't sit, couldn't lay down. All I could do was dope myself up on narcotics and try to sleep the time away.
I had two epidurals. The first one took the edge off the pain away but I was till unable to move. The second epidural I actually regressed.
So I went and had a microdiscectomy done. Turns out my nerve had slipped into a canal that had no room for it and was pinched inside. A week or two of recovery and I felt great again.
BUT....
I didn't change my habits, covid-19 hit, I started working from home where I did not have anything close to an ergonomic setup and my back started to ache again. This time it was the original disc. I was doing ok, but it was enough that I knew I should talk to my doctor. A couple weeks later, at the pool, I decided to go off the diving board while my back was slightly bothering, and that slight bother became nearly debilitating pain again and two months of physical therapy.
I feel great again, the PT worked this time.
What's my point? The injection doesn't always work. PT doesn't always work. There's lots of ways things can go wrong. Take care of yourself and be careful, next time you might not be so lucky!
As I mentioned, I also changed my entire workout regime. While strength is super important, 500+ pound DLs maybe not so much at my age. Both basketball and powerlifting I love, so it was definitely a mental shift. But, now I'm probably in the best complete shape I have ever been in. My cardio, strength and flexibility are balanced and good. COVID has actually been a good thing since I can jump up at any point in the day and take a 15 minute yoga class.
Good luck, I hope neither of us have to deal with back pain again :)
The impact of walking and running is dissipated into your calves instead of your joints, and the nice thing about muscle is that it grows back. Take it slow as you ramp up, I promise your calves aren't ready for it yet.
I like to run on Vibrams and sandals (I generally use a Shamma Warriors during the summer), and a have a bunch of other shoes for walking (Lems, Freet, Vivobarefoot, etc.)
A good all-around barefoot shoe that is suitable for both running and walking that I'd recommend is the Lems Primal 2.
Also: use toe socks (Injinji is the only brand I'd recommend) and, if you can, use toe spacers for a while (1-2 years minimum) to correct some potential issues with your toes placement (unfortunately the only brand that seems to be decent enough in the market is Correct Toes, but it's rather expensive; the cheaper ones you can find everywhere are no good in my experience)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGST6h3yhJE
As for the running technique, a good reference is this website:
Yes? You walk like that. Shorter steps, kind of gliding a little bit.
No? Buy some Vibrams. You'll get one soon enough.
I have to consciously engage muscles, even after practicing for years (can't afford Pilate's sessions which would make it go faster). Now I very rarely get the burning sensation and corresponding days, weeks, or months or not being able to sit or do much of anything.
Your comment would have been totally fine as a top level comment. It is a believable theory that quarantine is worsening mental illness. Your problem was the context in which your comment existed and the way you were effectively dismissing OPs experience out of hand.
I didn't claim that but I don't think that matters to you. All I said was that it's hard to tease out the difference between covid caused hardships and covid treament caused hardships. Cancer doesn't make your hair fall out on its own.
>Your comment would have been totally fine as a top level comment. It is a believable theory that quarantine is worsening mental illness. Your problem was the context in which your comment existed and the way you were effectively dismissing OPs experience out of hand.
I didn't dismiss his hardships. I didn't even dispute them. Stop putting words in my mouth. I only pointed out that (similar symptoms in other people who have had covid) might be caused by how we're treating it (quarantining people and so on) not the disease itself.
Either way, the end result is that both of us look like idiots continuing to argue over this. That is why it is pointless to continue.
Hypochondria is a major problem. Part of me finding out what was wrong to make a list of every symptom, every condition that a subset of symptoms, keep track of every test and what conditions it eliminated as possibilities. The sets of possibilities are enormous. At every step you get called a hypochondriac.
I didn’t directly find it, but when I showed table of symptoms, and what medications had been tried and failed and what tests had been run a doctor realized it was a rare autoimmune condition.
It’s such an odd thing to be given a terrible diagnosis. But feel immense relief that it’s not “in your head”
From support group, this is Apparently a common reaction.
I know what you are trying to say, but phrasing it like this is harmful. Psychosomatic issues are absolutely legitimate. Knowing it's psychosomatic means there may be other avenues of addressing it than if it wasn't, but calling the issues "not legitimate" is very problematic, akin to telling someone with depression "just think happy thoughts".
You can help the economy and get immunity at the same time! What do you have to lose?
1. Economics[2]
2. You not having friends was a prepandemic and a you problem
Simple test: what were your thoughts and emotions 5 minutes ago? 1 hour ago? since this morning? and how were you breathing (slowly with good posture or rapidly)? If your brain is constantly circling thoughts with no cool-down with bad posture it's guaranteed you will have physical problems.
For me the cure was a combination of:
- Slow breathing exercises
- Mindfulness (to learn to listen to the body and emotions, an to be aware and able to "control" thoughts). No mysticism bullshit, just having a brain and body at rest and present.
- Stoic philosophy : not worrying with things not in my control, not being affected by outcomes (e.g. objectively did my best and the boss/client is not happy? That's fine for me)
- Strength training
- Nutrition
- Financial security (I know I'm lucky but that doesn't change the point)
- Edit: "reconnecting with nature": again no mysticism, just outdoor walks, gardening, and taking the time to observe and appreciate while being fine doing nothing
The best I could describe my default state now is as being relatively at peace, with no negative thoughts circling, slowly breathing with good posture (that I can maintain while coding long hours for example). I'm still of anxious nature and still worry about the future, but only on the time period I will allow it (and not as a the permanent background noise). YMMV obviously.
Ultimately, a genetic test revealed it was a rare autoimmune disorder that causes a wide variety of hard to pin down inflammation-related pain.
I had already come up with a ton of coping mechanisms, and was halfway to accepting it was “just me” or “anxiety”. I’m so glad I finally found what it was, because it would have been devastating to have convinced myself all that was my fault without even any clear genesis.
Not to say yours isn’t. But it makes me wonder: we have no idea the complexity and incidence of smaller phenotypical irregularities that lead to any number of “minor pains” that get ultimately interpreted as “anxiety disorders”. You may even be anxious - who wouldn’t, with an unresolved medical issue spanning years - but you may also have some imbalances driving it that are hard to pin down.
Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly.
Lot of doctors run out of date tests. False negatives are also a big issue.
Sjogrens is really bad for that, 30% show negative on the standard test.
there is an “Early Sjo” that catches what other tests miss.
Crazy facebook/twitter people love to talk about their cure-all (why is always essential oils??). But the reality is there is never a simple solution to solve the issues.
Think of it as a holistic solution. Things to examine:
- Nutrition | Are you eating regularly or too much?
- Sleep | Is your sleeping regular
- Movement | I hate the word exercise! Just walking, stretching, or being outside is helpful
- Meditation | Learning how to use this to reduce anxiety and activates your parasympathetic nervous system
All of these can be very low/no cost
As for things that cost some money
- Therapy | Learning to understand yourself!
- Acupuncture | This varies for each person, but has helped my anxiety
Nutrition is the biggest. I’ve read so many people that come up with some crazy diet. Usually eliminating toxins nonsense.
But then you realize they are circling around an autoimmune protocol diet.
The person has inflammation problems, but doesn’t know it. They are slowly finding what really works.
Supplements is another one. People go crazy about them.
Turns out most people have a magnesium deficiency. Number one supplement that helped me out.
So I took the comment's point as that there are multiple potential causes for a given manifestation, and chronic conditions in particular are confusing because they invariably end up with physical -and- mental symptoms. There's something to be said for exploring easing the one you can do by yourself, at least to some extent. Mindfulness, slow breathing, and some of those other techniques helped me too. No matter which aspect is primary and which aspect is secondary, easing the mental stress some can still help.
Any other advice for what helped you?
I don't want to paint these as silver bullets. I still deal with my anxiety disorder on a regular basis. I just feel more able to look at it in third person a little to defuse some of the worst bits.
Edit: I'm always hesitant when someone uses the word advice, so I gave a vaguer reply than I needed to. I won't give advice but will give a little more detail.
Looking at the original list, the specific ones there I also have tried to improve with varying success are stoic philosophy, nutrition and fitness. But I'll also add sleep, since of them, sleep has had the most immediate effect that I've noticed. However, there's a chicken/egg thing there if you're too uncomfortable to sleep. I used a short course of sleep meds, but those have their own risks so YMMV.
Stoic philosophy is good to aspire to, but it's more end goal than technique IMO. It's a good thought yardstick, though, for what you "should" be feeling if you can step outside yourself a little.
There's a balance. The two sides of anxiety and chronic illness aren't at war. You can say it could be one thing without dismissing the other.
At the end it was very linked to my mental state, it took me half a decade to figure it. As parent comment is suggesting, slow breathing to remove tensions near your rib cage can help.
The most useful tool for me is to smoke cannabis, I then identify pain points in my body and massaging them with my hand vigorously is effective. Hope it can help people having « the same kind » of chronic pain.
- 1 in 5 people will have a first time diagnosis of a mental illness (including but not limited to anxiety) within the first 90 days of being infected.
This does not mean the diagnosis is chronic or even lasts beyond the duration of the disease. There have been studies done showing that about 2% of people still have symptoms resulting from coronavirus after 12 weeks [1].
We should not be conflating people getting anxiety from having coronavirus, with people developing chronic mental illness.
The fear of such a condition or death can also create tremendous amount of anxiety.
After I got 'better' I thought it was comparable in severity to a bad flu. It's becoming rapidly apparent that the real impact shows itself after sickbed. I'm 33. I feel like I've aged a few decades in the past month. I really hope this will pass.
Nurse once asked me pain level, I said 8. She lectured me that’s ER level of pain, not to use it anymore, I must be a pill seeker.
It was an 8.
The last time I went to the ER (a few years ago now) for something unrelated, I was in extreme pain. I'm used to pain. I can tolerate constant pain pretty well. This pain was way above what I could tolerate.
Instead of help from the nurse I got a lecture about lying about drug use and lying about pain. Eventually I got the help I needed but the whole experience was just so degrading at a time I would have preferred to die rather than continue the pain I felt.
[Edit: I really meant to ask, how do you know it's an 8 rather than a 7 or a 9? Isn't this very highly subjective? What does the number even tell us? Have you read https://xkcd.com/883/?]
I have small fibre neuropathy (nerve damage) in my arms and legs, and when it first started I thought I was going to go crazy - I just couldn't stand that amount of pain, constantly. I cried a lot, I begged doctors to make it go away, I went to the ER.
The fact is you can't stay like that forever - you either kill yourself, or you somehow learn to live with it.
You don't get used to chronic pain, but you adjust to a new "normal" level of pain. You develop coping mechanisms and learn to "bury it", get on with it as best you can. If you're lucky, you find some medication that actually helps somewhat. You research your condition and possible remedies, a lot. All of this isn't to say it gets easy, believe me it fecking well does not.
A lot of people (doctors included) don't seem to believe that you can be in severe pain, while sitting and conversing with them - "he seems fine to me!".
I'll add as well that I'm one of the "lucky" ones for whom a diagnostic test (skin biopsy) has shown concrete evidence that doctors believe in - without that, you'll get nothing but platitudes and shown the door. You'll probably also get told you have fibromyalgia, even if you don't remotely fit the criteria. I know this firsthand, because I have had to research and guide clueless doctors and insist on tests, and insist on re-tests when they've messed up.
That's very familiar. "I feel like I'm being stabbed in the eye" "But you seen fine" "It's been doing that for the last two years; at some point I just stopped reacting to it"
> I'll add as well that I'm one of the "lucky" ones for whom a diagnostic test (skin biopsy) has shown concrete evidence that doctors believe in
Having visible evidence definitely seems to help - my dermatologist seemed to be sceptical that my dermatographic urticaria[1] was as bad as I was saying given the dose of antihistamines I was on. She did a challenge test, and her first comment was words to the effect of "Huh, that _is_ severe". She ended up doubling the does of antihistamines. The "hidden" symptoms are much more of an uphill battle.
I much prefer the "Hyperbole and a Half" author's pain scale. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-does...
They're the same because they don't quantify how much it hurts, but instead how the pain affects you.
A 10 would be pain so severe you are unable to perceive anything besides your pain or do anything except writhe.
An 8 on such a scale would be pain that makes it difficult to focus on anything else, let alone listen calmly to a person and give a coherent answer.
A 5, while being distracting, would still allow you to function on some level.
A 3 would be pain that is somewhat easy to ignore.
You see how this is a scale that can actually be measured by an outside observer and is much more useful in figuring out what medication to give. Because while two people may have the same injury, one of them may be able to completely ignore the pain even without medication - so giving medication would only do harm - while the second person may need medication in order to function.
Assuming such a scale was used, it would make sense for the nurse to say "it isn't an 8" - because if it was an eight you wouldn't have been able to listen calmly and explain that to her, by definition.
Well, it won't only do harm though, right? It will still get rid of that person's pain.
If I fracture my ankle, but I learn to compensate by constantly shifting my weight onto my good leg as I limp so that I can still do my job -- in that scenario, I still want my ankle fixed. I don't want a doctor saying, "ah, but you have the special limp, so a cast and crutches would only do you harm." I want the cast, because the cast is probably easier, more comfortable, and in the long term less dangerous than what I'm currently doing.
Why would pain be different? Should someone not be able to get relief from suffering just because they've gotten good at mentally focusing through it?
It seems like the result of approaching pain from the perspective you're advocating for would just be to discourage people from trying to take any practical and/or psychological steps to manage their own pain, because every minor success they have will make it harder for them to get any additional help.
It is completely different. Your analogy isn't great.
A fractured ankle is a bad thing. A cast certainly won't do harm. Pain is a response of your body to a bad thing. Suppressing it can do harm in itself.
Some pain can often be desirable because it prevents a patient from further injuring themselves by, for instance, putting weight on an injured ankle. Pain is a warning system.
Add to that all the possible side-effects of painkillers.
On top of that there's context for everything. You should probably give a patient that experiences pain which can't be avoided painkillers earlier than a patient who experiences pain when they put weight on something they shouldn't.
You're describing someone with chronic pain. So... we should prioritize giving painkillers to someone with chronic pain over someone someone with temporary pain that will quickly go away if they don't do something dangerous? I agree with that.
If someone has chronic pain, that pain isn't helping them avoid doing something bad to their body. It's just pointless pain with no benefit. And even if I can force myself to function with chronic pain, I can still have long-term damage from stress, lack of sleep, damage to relationships, even just damage in terms of pure suffering. It's dangerous for a doctor to say, "you can hold a conversation with me, so medication would only do you harm." I don't think that's an objective scale, and I don't think it actually captures the risks of long-term damage and suffering.
If you want something with more downside than a cast, sub out something like surgery in my analogy instead. Either way, the point is that just being able to function in society is not an adequate measure by itself of whether or not someone needs medical help.
People who are regularly in great pain would read this comment as saying "you are being mauled by a bear, but if you have ripped your own vocal cords out so that you're not constantly screaming, we judge that preventing the bear from mauling you won't affect the environment much (since the screaming level will not change), so we will not prevent the bear from mauling you".
Talk to a chronic pain patient and they'll likely tell you they have to suppress reactions to the pain in order to not be dismissed as "playing it up" and thus drug seeking. That they are used to dealing with pain does not mean the pain is not there.
Add in myths like "black people can handle more pain", too. https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patient...
I absolutely refuse to give a numerical answer unless they first give me an objective calibration for the numbers. I recently got into a minor argument with a nurse before a minor surgery. "If you won't tell me a number, how will I know if I need to give you a painkiller?" "If I'm in enough pain to need a painkiller, I will tell you."
The number scale attempts to turn a subjective interpretation into an "objective" value. Instead of having to actually listen to people and apply training and experience to judge which treatments are needed, the number system de facto pushes that decision onto the patient so the doctor/nurse/etc only needs to follow a simple set of treatment rules. Similar to black box "AI" used in e.g. criminal sentencing and employee evaluations, the numeric pain scale is yet another example of a fundamentally subjective situation being laundered into a supposedly "objective" value.
It really sucks that we have no objective measure of pain; a tricorder that you could aim at someone and get a number back would be infinitely better than what we have now.
This number will be used to determine if a more in depth tool is needed (like if you say 7-10). What type of treatment is needed (pain tolerance is different from person to person, so even if two people have the same injury or disease, one might say 8 and need pain killers and the other might say 3 and not). It will be used to gauge if a treatment is working (when you first came in you were at a baseline of 6, but after taking this treatment, you're at a 2), and so on.
Thus, a personal scale makes sense.
Talk about the things you used to do that you are not able to do now because of the pain.
For short term pain number 8 is supposed to be able to read or converse but only with effort; dizzy and / or nauseous; limited physical activity; difficulty in functioning; and strong painkillers are not so effective.
Number 9 is unable to speak; crying out or moaning uncontrollably.
Number 7 is interference with sleep, difficulty concentrating.
But if it goes on more than a few hours I will jump off a cliff to end suffering.
I stayed away from the really strong pain killers. But man it was hard. I did not want end up with an addiction on top of everything else.
Wikipedia isn't much help[1]. It lists 30+ "pain measurement scales", but clicking a few of them doesn't tell me any specifics about how they work.
Looks like someone has in fact tried strategy 1. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/js/2018/6205896/ mentions: "Recently, a quantitative pain-assessing method using electrical stimulation was introduced [12–15]. PainVision™ devices measure perception threshold and pain produced by an electrical current. This system quantifies pain intensity by comparing the experienced pain with the intensity of electrical perceptions. The perception threshold indicates the minimal electric current sensed by the individual, and the pain produced is defined as the maximal electric current sensed by the individual. However, the skin resistance of an individual may affect the electrical measurement result [16–20]."
Their refinement continues: "our system measures from the patient’s skin resistance before measuring the pain." "In this work, we developed a pain measurement device that has two analysis methods, electrical stimulation and applying pressure, for more accurate cross-validation assessment. During electrical stimulation, electrical stress is applied on a nonpain site and then the observed stress can be compared to pain. ... During the pressure evaluation, pain was assessed by applying pressure on the pain site. Inflammation was induced on the rat’s hind paw by carrageenan, and then the inflamed hind paw was stimulated by a hand-type pressure stimulator. The pressure site was then compared with the inflammation levels." Seems like it might be workable.
Chronic pain sucks...but people fail to understand that some people suffer from high level of pain and that doctors often fail to manage it. I have tried many things to manage my pain, it is at a point where I for the most part get on with my life with some "take it easy" days. Unfortunately, the only thing that helps is opiates, and currently nobody wants to prescribe those. My primary does and 30 pills of low dose last me months. Still when I switched doctors they refused giving me opiates, even though all the other meds lyrica, cymbalata, gabapentin did nothing. A pain doctor offered ketamine treatments at $500....like that is reasonable on monthly basis.
> Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety!
hits hard.
Doctors are sometimes like developers, when they don't find the root cause of an issue they blame it on the network or the OS
A firewall is easy enough to test with pings, telnets, etc. but the LB rarely seems to make much sense and it seems like there's only one guy who knows how it works and they never explain what they changed.
There is a no way it’s DNS
It was DNS
(But to continue the analogy, a reason to be scrutinize this paper is, because the process has been working fine for years no one has looked at the logs in an age, and when they do, oh my .... there are many things going wrong might not related to the release at all.)
I wonder what the developer equivalent of steroids would be.
Now a part of every health care provider conversation.
From the article: "Anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients in the study who developed mental health problems". It isn't about long COVID.
We're living in a uncertain, stressful time. Even people who haven't got COVID-19 have some degree of anxiety, of course getting it and not knowing if you will end up in a ventilator will have a bigger impact on your mental health.
Small wonder mental illness is up indeed...
This is why I've said from the beginning that impact to life expectancy should be the metric which guides public policy. It accounts for lives of children being worth more than the lives of the elderly, because the elderly have less life to lose.
Losing your mind now and then is absolutely okay.
--- I'm paraphrasing someone close to me --- God is giving me only what I can handle. Making me stronger in the process. Something even worse is coming down the line so get ready.
This life is a test for what comes next.
How will you be graded? Besides that, the tiredness is mostly gone now (it had better be after a good 8 months), though every now and then it can still recur and then I'm 'down' for a bit.
As for planning, I updated my will a week ago with all this at the back of my mind.
So while I recognize some of it I am happy that I apparently had a 'mild' case of this, and I feel very sorry for anybody that had it worse (and their families as well).
A quick google of "b vitamin deficiency fine motor impairment" brings up B 12 repeatedly in references. Some B vitamin or other was one of the supplements medically recommended for children with autism that I gave to one of my sons when he was about eight years old and his handwriting issues improved. (I would have to try to dig up old notes, if they still exist, to say exactly which b vitamin.)
https://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/nother/vitamin.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476750/
https://www.symptoma.com/en/ddx/fine-motor-coordination-prob...
https://www.b12deficiency.info/blog/tag/poor-motor-skills/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency
(I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice for anyone, much less for the OP. This is just a general observation for anyone interested.)
Edit:
Yep, my old notes still exist and B 12 is one of the three B vitamins listed (I never found DMG but gave the three B vitamins and magnesium to my son and after a few months saw improvement in social issues and handwriting). Excerpt from an old blog post:
"In 1996, I found some information on the Internet about a vitamin therapy that doctors sometimes prescribe for autistic spectrum children. Recently, I found the crumpled, pathetic slip of paper that I originally wrote my notes on. My original note has the following bullet points written willie-nillie, all over the place:
(DMG) Dimethylglycine
125mg tablets or capsules
take 2 - 3 weeks ("then add"),
vitamins B6, B5 then add B12/magnesium
Okay, I take that to mean that all the doses are supposed to be 125 milligrams. They did suggest you start things either one at a time or in pairs (and I take my notes to mean that the pairs are 'B6 with B5' and 'B12 with Magnesium') and observe if there were behavior changes with the addition of each thing. I think 2-3 weeks is how long you should have the child on each supplement before adding the next one."
The only one I had was feeling a bit upset about how it effected my skin some horrible looking scabs.
edited for spelling
> You're not going to get through it without losing your mind now and then.
Why does this read like a Mountain Goats song?
Looks like Mountain Goats is a successor though.
-20 to my trust and confidence in the healthcare establishment
Your mystery illness has now been correctly diagnosed. It’s somewhat treatable. You are given access to a support group that knows your pain.
Had some really bad years before figuring out what was wrong. Found support groups. All of those points are sadly the norm.
Basically everything in body was inflamed or damaged and I was having weekly minor strokes.
Also extremely hypersensitive to most meds.
Your rewards are as follows.
You have max exhaustion at all hours of the day!
Exercise recovery is bumped from next day to 2 weeks!
Your pain level is now on par with dying cancer patients!
Everyone now considers you lazy and incompetent!
Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety!
You gain +1 to medical research ability. But -20 to Reputation.
You now get spontaneous and useless medical advise from people that believe in essential oil.
You are now on timer with your job until sympathy runs out!
Disability now can mock you openly as clearly your faking and don’t have a real condition!
You are now a burden to your family!
+10 sneak score; you quickly learn to hide your suffering!
+20 to loneliness!
-20 to persuasion! Asking for help gets little from doctor's.
+10 Planning! Your kids may be orphans soon, make sure they get taken care of. Read fine print on death benefits. ——-
Staying positive when you have a chronic condition is incredibly difficult.
Your not going to get through it without losing your mind now and then.