![]() ![]() Trying to ignore the pain didn't stop endometriosis from strangling my large intestines and adhering my ovaries and fallopian tubes to my colon. ![]() In my case, ignoring the heavy bleeding and cramping I experienced every month (often multiple times a month) and the daily gastrointestinal distress I had for years did not make the attending pain go away, despite the repeated dismissals I received from doctors. This tactic may have worked for the author, but I doubt it would work as well for many of us women with clearly definable conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and chronic migraine, or sex-specific diseases like endometriosis. Eventually the mind should let go." Treatment must be individualized The solution, as Robert explains, was: ".don't dwell on the pain, and don't try to fix it - no props, no pills. Eventually he enrolled in a program through the Mayo Clinic that treated chronic pain as "a malfunction in perception," that is, a self-reinforcing addiction to and dramatization of pain. While the exact reasons for this discrepancy haven't been pinpointed yet, biology and hormones are suspected to play a role.Īs for Roberts, his lab tests yielded no apparent findings to explain his back pain. One of the few studies to research gender differences in the experience of pain found that women tend to feel it more of the time and more intensely than men. And yet, 80% of pain studies are conducted on male mice or human men. To return to the issue of chronic pain, 70% of the people it impacts are women. Why? Because the medical concepts of most diseases are based on understandings of male physiology, and women have altogether different symptoms than men when having a heart attack. For instance, a 2000 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that women are seven times more likely than men to be misdiagnosed and discharged in the middle of having a heart attack. These gender biases in our medical system can have serious and sometimes fatal repercussions. We wait an average of 65 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain in the ER in the United States, while men wait only 49 minutes. One study even showed women who received coronary bypass surgery were only half as likely to be prescribed painkillers, as compared to men who had undergone the same procedure. Women with chronic pain may suffer more and longer than menĬonsider this: women in pain are much more likely than men to receive prescriptions for sedatives, rather than pain medication, for their ailments. This stands in stark contrast to the experiences of many (if not most) women, where our pain is often abruptly dismissed as psychological - a physical manifestation of stress, anxiety, or depression. ![]() He is immediately offered leave to find treatment, despite the lack of a definitive diagnosis. The first and most prominent source of annoyance for me regarding this piece was the part when the author finally discloses his pain to his employer and it is taken with the utmost seriousness. However, for many of us in the chronic pain community, particularly women, the piece was regarded with weariness and frustration. The piece immediately went viral, with distinguished news journalist and personality Dan Rather posting it to his Facebook page with the addendum that it could "offer hope" to some pain patients. In August, The New York Times published a guest op-ed by a man named David Roberts who suffered from severe chronic pain for many years before finally finding relief. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |