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Monday 3 March 2014

To start with I am rather new to this so the blogging thing may take a while to get going.  Possibly it will fizzle.  But unless you try you never know.

So I am going to imagine I have an audience out there.  Hello *waves*

Why am I blogging?  because I like ranting about things.  And other bloggers don't rant correctly.

So for my first rant...pain.

EDS comes with pain as a standard feature.  EDS-HT has more pain than other types, even though it is generally the least serious variety.  I spend my life in pain, sometimes severe, often just a background ache.  One of the better ways I have heard this described is think of the day you get flu.  You don't have the fever yet or the cough but your joints ache all over and you are so-darned-tired.

That's EDS-HT on a good day.

Now this rant is not a cry for sympathy.  I wouldn't know what to do with that if i got it and it certainly wouldn't change anything.  This rant is about attitudes to pain and pain medication.  There may be a supplemental rant about Pain Vultures.

If you mention to anyone that you are on pain medication the first thing you will be asked is when you are coming off it.  That's my experience anyway.  If you take pain medication in front of people they become uncomfortable.  I have had people change seats on flights to get away from me because I have used my in-flight coke to wash down some tramadol.  Pain medication is seen as a short term thing, and it is also seen as a vice.

When pain medication is mentioned in the media it is frequently in a context such as this call to tackle addiction or this warning about secret addiction in fact addiction is often the stand-out word.  After all who wants an addict as a husband, teacher, lawyer?  But what do we mean by addict?  Most people will develope a physical dependency on opiates and opioids through long term legitimate usage.  Are they addicts?  Well many people would say yes.

Pain medication is only fine if you are dying.  It is almost synonymous with palliative care.  If you are living it is something that should be short term, rationed and shunned.  But what does this mean for people living with chronic pain?  Generally a choice between being shunned and being in pain.

Drugs can change you, and change your behavior.  But nowhere near as much as constant pain does.  Chronic pain is undertreated, ignored and even seen as something that refines ones spirit.  Of course it makes you four times more likely to commit suicide, and that, mark you is amongst the ones who get specialised pain treatment at a dedicated clinic.  Pain clinics in the UK are not widely available, and often have pressures put on them by ideologues so that their goals are redefined toward reduction of drug use rather than control of symptoms.

Pain is something we treat poorly, understand poorly and tolerate poorly.  In this background the pain vultures thrive.  You know who i mean, the osteopaths, acupuncturists, Hopi ear candle merchants etc.  Offering hope to the hopeless.  There is a special circle of hell reserved for these people.

But that's another rant.

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