Hi again Gcoe. Thank you for your continued responses. I really do appreciate you taking the time.
Quote Originally Posted by gcoe View Post
As a clinician this suggests to me a good prognostic sign. My understanding is that in people with chronic pain who have constant unrelenting pain are much less amenable to treatment than when there is some time during the day when you are pain free.
Good to hear. The way I avoid pain, which I haven't really mentioned, is by putting my left arm up fairly hard behind my back. This both lowers my shoulder and forces it back a bit, and is pretty effective. That's the position I try to keep it in during sleep. It is quite uncomfortable, but if I can have it there the whole night I'll normally be fairly pain-free for the first part of the morning. This doesn't happen often. I also put my arm up behind my back like that during the day when I can, which can alleviate pain as well, but only during the time it is in that position. If the pain has gotten really bad then that arm-behind-back thing doesn't really help at all.
yes I can understand your skepticism about this as your experience doesn't seem to match up. In my clinical experience *I would maintain that this may well be just another of your chronic pain experiences even though it seems very somatic to you. The brain is unbelievably complex and capable of simulating all manner of sensory experiences.
Aye, I know, and it's entirely possible that you're right. There is no perfect way to distinguish if your brain is tricking you or not in circumstances like these, but the fact that I can alleviate the pain through certain physical measures is enough to give me hope that at least the core of it might be physical.
When people with chronic pain finally do get to a chronic pain team they often give a long history of bad experiences with all sorts of practitioners
heh don't get me started on that!
this may have been an anaesthetic area if you had a pinched nerve at the time.
Not sure if I've read you correctly there, but it's like that all the time. 100% of the time. I cannot feel heat on that spot, ever. No matter time of day/night or pain-level.
So...I have a question for you: from what we have discussed what do you think you will do from here?
At the moment I take anti-depressants, and, as strange as this may sound, I don't actually like to take action on this because every time I have it has failed miserably and I've gone into further depression. I am thinking that when I need the new script (which is soon) I will sit down with my local GP and speak to him with the knowledge I have gathered here, and see what he says. Really I don't know. Every doctor to date has failed me. I haven't talked to osteopaths, acupuncturists or orthopediatricians. The main reason I'm posting here is because I'm really after some guidance from people like yourself on what I should do next.