Brain scans of people in chronic pain show a state of constant activity in areas that should be at rest, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, a finding that could help explain why pain patients have higher rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders.
Re: Depression
Of course we're depressed. Think about it. You cannot wake up in the morning (if you slept at all) without being in pain. You get used to the pain, yeah, but at the same time, it's still a chemical reaction in the brain which causes discomfort. It isn't something that goes away. Your body is broken and you cannot fix it. That is a lack of control over yourself and that is depressing. So is the realization that it's going to hurt until the day you die.
Re: Anxiety
There is always the fear that the pain will get worse, that the pain will spread, that new nerve endings will find themselves affected by this problem and that you'll be in a much more painful situation than you were before. For some people it isn't an anxiety disorder but just a general fear of not being able to control your own brain and your own body. It's not fun.
Re: Other Disorders
I am the most well adjusted drug addict on the face of the earth.
Chronic pain tends to make people different than they were before said pain struck. However in my case...it's been so long I can't remember what it was like to walk without feeling like I'm going to fall over. And even with what Emma did for me, which I'm entirely grateful for because it's like a second chance...maybe I'm just a selfish bastard because I wish I didn't need a mental block to feel like I'm not in pain.
[locked to the 'adults' : Brittany, Emma, Scott, Kelly, Nic, Sam, Lee, and Ynez]
Shit happens. I was stupid all those years ago and made the mistake of grabbing the syringe out of his hand. Somehow despite my pleas for painkillers he thought it would be intelligent to keep them from me. Somehow despite the fact that I was screaming at him he thought I was faking. I grabbed it and I jabbed it into my leg and he thought I was a drug addict looking for a score.
Funny how that worked out. They looked at me like an addict and it was three days of muscle death in my future. When muscle tissue dies it sends the dead cells into the bloodstream and into the body. The body's white cells attack. A war rages in your system as you try and fight yourself. Pain. Unbearable pain. They kept me on a minimal dose of painkillers because of my stunt in the clinic. Young doctor with a fresh addiction to feed. Again, funny how that turned out.
Three. Days.
Once they checked for the infarction it was too late. The clot had cut off too much blood flow for too long. They wanted to amputate. I said no. I toughed out another two days of the dead cells fighting in my system. They had me on the highest dose of morphine they could give me without causing me to OD and I still couldn't move. My throat went raw from screaming. That is pain.
Why am I talking about this? Because I don't want to go through it again. One stupid fucking stupid mistake of mine caused an entire chain reaction that sealed my fate. Of course you say that I couldn't have known it was a clot and that the doctor should have listened. Then again I told the nurse she had twenty seconds until I went into cardiac arrest and it was really only thirteen.
Pain. I've been beat up. I've been jumped in a dark alley. I've been clipped by a bullet just above the elbow. I got another in my gut that ended up against a rib. A third took out my jugular. Shock. Pain. I've broken bones. I've gotten so drunk I thought I was going to die. I've electrocuted myself.
I've overdosed.
Yet, the pain still persists. And as long as the pain persists, I'm still going to be an addict taking the Vicodin.
I'm never going to win.
Fuck it, I'm going to bed. A blog entry about an article I read on the internet while battling my apparent newfound insomnia turns into a fueled by the two glasses of scotch to help me sleep post of...whatever the fuck this is. It is what it is. I am who I am.
Now if I could stop dreaming about staring up at the business end of a semi-automatic .45, I would be set.
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doctorhouse_tm) wrote,
grumpy
