#Pain Physicians

[youngchronicpain]

I've been keeping my pain meds in a music box that is lined in red cloth that I found at an antique store and honestly. The vibes are impeccable. It plays creepy music every time I open it. I love it.

[lady-harrowhark]

went to the emergency dentist today after 5 days of excruciating pain and they couldn’t find anything wrong other than that there’s an obvious spot of irritation, so he said it looks like either something cut me there or there was a bone spur that worked its way out. i asked what to do for the pain and was told to call back next friday if it’s not better “since it’s just achy and [i] can push through”. when i asked how i was meant to sleep or eat in the meantime given that tylenol+ibuprofen+orajel+ice wasn’t helping, he didn’t have any suggestions other than “alternating” tylenol and ibuprofen (i.e., taking less medication than i have been).

so the takeaway here is that if you are a woman with a naturally bubbly and smiley disposition, doctors will ignore the words coming out of your mouth because you don’t “look like you’re in pain.”

[populationpensive]

Abdominal Pain PSA

I've had a run of people admitted to the ICU after have 1-2 weeks of abdominal pain who were struggling to eat or drink that ended up having conditions leading to necrotic bowel. Dead bowel makes people incredibly sick. Like, death's door sick. Anecdotally, I'd say maybe 60% of our patients make it through such an ordeal. Every time I talk with their families, their loved ones say that they looked bad and they tried to get the patient to go get some help. Often, these people wait too long.

So.

PSA: if you're having abdominal pain and can't keep anything down for more than 48 hours (especially in the context of N/V WITHOUT bowel movements), you NEED to go to the ER. Not urgent care. Not your PCP. The ER. Please get checked out. Do not let things sit. If you have known GI disease like diverticulosis, a hernia, etc, even more of a reason to get checked out.

[alostwanderernotfound]

Hostile Power Takeover? Learnings on Urban & Domestic Warfare , “PANDEMICS: How We are Spreading Diseases”:

Want to Stop Pandemics?

We Need to Address How Our Systems Contribute to Disease Spread & How It Is Making Pathogens Stronger

1: Understaffing & too much workload

- When it comes to the greatest factor that influences every other issue in preventing the spread of infectious disease in healthcare settings it is workload vs amount of staffing. Overburdening staff results in more medical errors, more issues missed, less time with patients, less time able to be spent per patient, often limited ability to customize treatment plans, less diseases screened for, less infectious control practices used like hand washing, more grouping of sick people in close proximity, using unsafer practices to save time, attempting tasks distracted, & many other sources of both harm & pathogen spread. This issue is inseparable from safety.

2: Need for Universal safety practices in hospital culture

-Often times many hospitals throughout different regions have different training programs with some similar content & some very different content included in their training. There are some safety-related practices that are not taught universally. I think the lack of standardization across the world has really negatively impacted us. As healthcare, healthcare staff, our healthcare buildings change & evolve, these safety practices can get lost along the way.

For example: Pathogens all spread in a certain & defined way based off their characteristics. Some of the more common disease spread through making physical contact with the pathogen (for instance touching something contaminated), touching & inhaling pathogens in droplets, and by breathing in airborne pathogens. BUT, it is important to remember that we often forget that most of the pathogens that make us sick are autonomous & tangible things. They take up space & they move. It is very easy to not see something & not feel it & for it then to be on the bottom list of priorities. Two major examples of often unknown risk are in 2 common practices:

>New Toilets

- A lot of hospitals got rid of toilet lids. Flushing bodily fluids results in those infectious particles going into the air. Disease that weren’t originally airborne would then be airborne. These pathogens can possibly be breathed in. Even if toilets are moved to a different room to protect patients, staff will possibly breathe in these particles.

>Venipuncture?

- You DO NOT need to get a needle stick injury to get a blood borne illness from someone. Drawing blood (specifically winged butterfly sets)produces blood splatter at a significant rate. This means if you were following the disease precautions that we do for everything else, you should be required to wear protective equipment: goggles, disposable gown, & gloves when drawing blood. This is not a standard that is enforced in the culture & many forget or are not aware. (1)

3: Lack of infectious disease teams

- Staff should be dedicated to prevention, control, & monitoring for success in these topics in each hospital. For obvious safety reasons.

4: Disease Screening & Pathogen identification

- Often times screenings are skipped due to patient’s lack of access to healthcare, understaffing, & lack of resources. But there are MANY practices I will continue to advocate for to get funding & to be done around the globe. I’m going to reiterate strongly that not all systems are perfect, but currently the risk for the world is far too high. I’m in favor of universal screening for blood borne disease with at least all inpatient hospital stays and likewise universal testing for respiratory illness is a good approach during “winter seasons”.

- I also think identification of pathogens & their characteristics inside places where healthcare is done is necessary. Reevaluation of cleaning practices is necessary. The level of antibiotic resistance we now see with MRSA or antibiotic resistant staph could happen to ANY other pathogen & we are not taking enough steps to prevent it.

6: Where “Knowledge” Becomes Deadly

- Unfortunately a large proportion of our knowledge comes from observing problems and then frantically attempting to solve them in the middle of a crisis. We have studies on diseases and then we learn & teach everyone based off the most up to date scientific knowledge we have available at that time. I think our understanding of a lot of disease processes & body processes are very incomplete. I also think that people have been steered in a very dangerous direction over the course of history despite ample warning. The specific directions medicine went into for standards of care over history is deeply disturbing & highly suggestive that someone trying to hurt people was attempting to influence the medical sphere by any means necessary including force. Without a full understanding of all the different functions organs do, the standard in medicine many, many years ago became to just start removing things. This became the “gold standard” of care or best practice for a very common problem that can be treated in other & less invasive ways. But since funding, research, & general direction hasn’t been focused on getting more info on specific important topics- these are practices we still do to this day. To reiterate something I said long ago, when someone has a tummy ache, no one actually suggests to take out the stomach. Despite nonstop pushing for more federal regulation, there are still few regulations on supplements. This is dangerous and it’s hard to recommend these type of needed supplements when they are not standardized across the board in regards to their safety. All your organs do multiple things. If you take any out or damage them you will need some type of “replacement therapy” to feel normal again. The issue is that primarily books & research inform healthcare worker education. But if no one will fund the research or investigate specific topics, the interventions & meds that help never get taught. It’s not that the interventions don’t work, it’s just that someone established the norm to be the most painful/hardest on your body type treatment. I reiterate, that seems HIGHLY suspect for something being wrong in multiple domains to get us to this point.

There are forces trying to take us down a dark path & I continually hope it isn’t too late to prevent harm in all domains of our lives. I debate with myself about including links with each post due to how cluttered it gets. But I think it’s incredibly uncomfortable topics like drawing people’s blood has a somewhat unknown & higher risk for pathogen exposure than people say that’s been demonstrated in research & people don’t make a bigger deal about it. It’s hard information to find on google & many hospital cultures do not emphasize its dangers in the same way even that we do towards MRSA. It’s incredibly uncomfortable reality to find ourselves in, but something’s got to change.

(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196655308005427

[laneaconite]

Treatment

“Take this pill,” They say.

Take this pill and it should work

 In a month,

                    Three months,

                                            Six.

Take this pill,

And it will make you tired.

                                        They all make you tired,

Because they act on the brain, 

                                            ��     You see.

Take this pill,

“We’re sorry the others didn’t work.”

We will smile

                    Sympathetically.

                                                 We do care.

Take this

            Pill.

                  It will make you dizzy.

Take this

            Injection.

                           Since it is treatment resistant

Now.

It will hurt,

                 It will make you itch.

You can still keep taking the old ones,

                                                         In case they end up working

                                                                                                          Too.

Take this pill,

                      It should work in one month,

                                                                    Three months,

Six.

No, we don’t know

                               Why this is happening.

We don’t know

                     How to fix it.

Your blood screening was

                                           Normal.

Your CT scan was

                                Normal.

Take this pill.

-Lane Aconite,

March 5th, 2023

[haleingstorm]

I'm back on my pjo bullshit now with added Naruto for flavor.

Team 7 gets reborn into pjo, who are they? Well I'm glad you asked.

What is the difference between too much loyalty, so much you forsake your own life, your well-being, your mission, and too much love? Uchiha's feel too much, too much love and too much hate. Percy Jackson is a son of the sea god but his eyes burn with fire. He is jaded and proud and desperately wants to keep his people alive. He is a master swordsmen because he has spent a entire lifetime perfecting his skills. His enemys expect him to fight like a Greek and underestimate him.

Annabeth Chase looks at Luke and thinks 'I've seen this before, I know what you will become ' but she can not stop him, will not stop him because she loves him. Annabeth fully believed that Thalia's death is her fault because she wasn't good enough, she was too weak too useless. She knows Luke blames her too(does he? Not to begin with but with Kronos whispering in his ears...). Annabeth meets Percy and thinks 'oh I know you'. Their relationship is not easy. This is not a love built on quests, and soft smiles and protection. It is one built on death and betrayal, barred teeth and knives at each other's throats. But they make it work.

History has a tendency to repeat itself and another little boy is called a monster. Leo Valdez knows who he and who he was. He knows somewhere out there his brother/person/other half is waiting for him. The first time Leo hears the prophecy he makes a choice, the only choice. The first time he gets his brother again he hugs him and does not let go for a long long time(Annabeth looks at the two of them and greives, you think at this point she would be used to always coming in second but that doesn't stop it from hurting).

Team 7 looks at the rest of the 7 and says no. They will make it home. Whatever else happens we will bring them home.

[revelations-mp3]

Trying to acknowledge my wins today bcuz I feel like a complete failure ! I called for my prescription refill which I will definitely pick up tomorrow because I will run out of medication tomorrow 😐 and I made a doctors appointment which is honestly terrifying and I’m scared and anxious and scared

[cinnamontoads]

how do i get tested for fibromyalgia

[talkethtothehandeth]

It keeps me up at night wondering what kind of medical treatment I would’ve already received had I been been born amab. like would they have listened to me on the second ER visit, or would it have been the third? it couldn’t have been on the fifth time, right? would they have not told me my malnutrition was minor and nothing to be worried about? would they have not suggested it was because of my anxiety? would I have got the feeding tube I needed before my body broke down the way it did, or would they have let me continue to starve? would I already have a diagnosis by now and be able to have access to proper treatment??

last year I went to the er doubled over in pain from (what turned out to be) unbearable cramps. the doctor could barely even press on my abdomen to assess me for appendicitis, yet ordered me toradol for the pain. but a couple of weeks later my dad walked into same the er and received morphine because they thought it was his appendix, which turned out to be just constipation 

i don’t want to know if I would not be this bad, but I know I wouldn’t be this bad if I wasn’t born afab

[non-un-topo]

The irony of trying to start a "pain journal" but being too fatigued and having too much brain fog from said pain to start one

[muffuletadiver]

prior authorization got denied. hoping everyone who works for health insurance companies dies tonight. "can you please stop using this medication you've used forever and switch to a different medication in an inefficient and costly manner so we don't have to spend more money?" fuck off!!

[californiaquail]

googling something and needing a real answer but the only articles coming up are written by robots

[jacqcrisis]

its funny how, as a child of two chiropractors, my first thought upon throwing out my back is not to go pay someone for an adjustment that wouldn't actually help anything but line a chiro's pockets, but to do meaningful exercises and stretches to soothe whatever lumbar muscles got pissy yesterday. I could barely stand yesterday, but after doing what you should, I'm already 60% better today.

[yellow-lemon-lime]

This poll is brought to you by Debilitating Headaches Inc. Your ticket to spending the day in bed.

[prionz]

i am actually so tired just gotta stay motivated

[gojobait]

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