Interesting Shares

No, chronic pain doesn’t radicalize. Chronic pain gives you clarity. Chronic pain shows the world for what it truly is: a society that doesn’t care about you if you can’t hold a job, and paradoxically, believes that you are just fine if you can.

Bruh.

Chronic pain shows you that medicine, as a field, is based on statistics and bell curves. If you don’t land in the center of one of those bell curves, it doesn’t matter how much access you have to doctors and treatment, eventually everyone discharges you with a shrug and a sorry, if you are lucky.

I have, unfortunately, had experience with heart disease and cancer. On heart disease I lucked out and got a crazy surgeon who installed four stents. Every other (5) cardiologist I have spoken to (all supposedly top tier) has been surprised by that because they would have cracked me open and gone with a bypass.

On the cancer side, my first doctor's plan would have left me broken for however long I had afterwards. So my wife researched and found the best money could buy and I came out the other side relatively normal.

The problem with medicine goes back to an old joke. What do you call the person who graduated medical school last on their class? Doctor. The worst, most careless, doctors will still cost an arm and a leg (sometimes literally), so money is not a fix. Ultimately you have to do exhaustive research and find your own care. Most people will have to rely on luck.