Of note: This hits somewhat close to home for me as I’ve suffered from lower back pain - from the age of 11 (or a bit earlier, amnesia’s a bitch) - that I can now say was & still is more painful than when I fully shattered my wrist (~21 y/o) in a gnarly accident. Also much worse than the aches & pains associated with getting hit by a car as a pedestrian (eh, PEV user more accurate) twice now.

Shoulder & neck pain near the same since ~13, & pelvic/hip pain roughly ~75% as bad, & but also just indescribably & unfathomably uncomfortable.

It’s so bad that when I’d very obviously shattered my wrist, I calmly walked into my backwoods emergency room simply to get an X-ray & nothing more so I could quickly get to a surgeon in a larger city. They told me I’d be screaming, that there was no way my wrist was broken, & I was only seeking drugs. After I made them pull up my medical history from Mayo Clinic & Harvards’ medical teaching school (Mass Gen. Hospital - apologies if I’m accrediting that incorrectly) they begrudgingly gave me an X-ray. Whatever radiology tech that was working the backwoods at 3am said there were no fractures, despite them being clearly visible on the monitor. They called it a sprain & offered me Tramadol for pain in the end, hoping it would make this drug seeker go away with his small bounty. I ripped up the script & told them to fuck off.

Luckily, I had insurance that made it so I could schedule w/a surgeon in my network online, & luckily, a highly rated hand surgeon had a near next day opening. He immediately saw two broken bones on the X-ray, & another bad spot he wasn’t 100% on. Ordered a CT scan, found 3 badly broken bones (scaphoid, most importantly), & told me I’d have likely permanently lost use of that hand in a week or two w/o surgery. Got me an emergency scheduling, & I came out w/5 screws. He himself was curious about my lack of screaming in pain once he saw the CT results - I told him about the condition affecting my shoulders & neck, neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, & he seemed to immediately understand, though I was his first patient he’d personally seen with the condition.

But, I digress my ramblings.

Unmanaged chronic pain, even when the pain level isn’t particularly high - just constant, for weeks/months on end - will rob you of everything you managed to be capable of in life.

In my case, I went from acing my differential equations, thermodynamics, & fluid dynamics engineering classes, to name a few - to barely being able to do basic trigonometry on my best days. My nearly perfect grammar & writing skills (scored highest percentile in reading/writing on ACT & SAT, for whatever that’s worth. Also placed as a finalist in state spelling bee) are now complete dogshit - as can be seen in my HN comments - & I don’t feel as if I can articulate my thoughts better than a middle schooler at this point. Some of my engineering professors actually asked me why I didn’t go into something English/writing related, as my scores weren’t as high in math/science.

Despite a letter from Mass Generals Chief of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome program, essentially begging a surgeon in my state to refer me to proper pain management as my surgery kept getting cancelled (coronavirus shit), & that surgeon in my state promising me twice he would get me pain management - while looking me in the eyes - I showed up to a pain management appt, all documentation in hand, & was essentially laughed out of the office as a very particular type of young white male drug seeker. I do not believe I’d met a larger egoistical psychopath in my life at that point. Sociopaths/Psychopaths in medicine seem to be drawn to pain management positions. Well, I’m pulling that out of my ass - but support group anecdata seems to support the notion.

Anyways. If you are in severe pain that derails your entire full ride scholarship university education & your career. Even then. The US medical system does not give the slightest fuck about you. You are nothing more than a lazy drug seeker that wants to spend life on welfare in your drug induced euphoria. You will die if you don’t have the support/money to pursue other options. While I won’t get more into it - Mexico, of all places, is much more humane than the US when it comes to pain mgmt.

Final note: the opiates - I think Roxycodone 10mg - that the surgeon made me promise to take, as it would promote better healing of my wrist - was the first thing in my entire life, & at that point a decade of pure unadulterated suffering, to actually help my lower back pain. The first of 7 pills induced mild euphoria for the first ~15 minutes. No euphoria after that, only the strange sense of “holy shit I’m lying in bed & my back hasn’t hurt in 3 days”

The US medical system likely decided the fate of an otherwise fairly promising life long ago, & that fate is a death of despair.

Sorry for the text wall, didn’t plan on being so butthurt over this article.