Chronic pain, particularly neuropathic pain, can be completely disabling. I suffer from several sources of chronic pain; interstitial cystitis (a painful, incurable bladder condition), RSD (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy), and Fibromyalgia. Any one of these can be in remission but it never happens that all are in remission. I had to give up a job that I really enjoyed because I could not work in pain and I could not work on the pain medication. Losing the ability to work was the most difficult part of my experience thus far because working, and striving to excel at my work, was my way of maintaining good mental health. Chronic pain can, and often does, lead to debilitating chronic depression and depression is often part of a vicious cycle.
In the beginning, when one is going to doctor after doctor and getting no real diagnosis that accounts for the severity of your pain, one often feels as if you are losing your mind. You ask yourself, "Am I creating this?" "Do I really subconciously want to suffer to get attention?" and so on. It isn't until you get a doctor who believes that chronic pain is in itself a disease, and who validates your pain, that you can even begin to cope with it.
I hope to continue to explore the various coping mechanisms that patients use, research about treatments and sharing my own experience here in the hope that it will:
A) Help someone else to cope with their own pain.
B) Increase awareness of the devastating nature of chronic pain.
C) Learn new things from others who add their thoughts and experiences.
