You can come up with a lot of reasons for the discrepancy in risk taking behavior but 99.9% of the idiotic injuries that come into the ED are men. Legit had a guy come in with half his hand blown off because they were playing firecracker chicken
Is Fibromayalga Real?
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My wife suffered from fibromyalgia for 25 or 30 of the 40 years I knew her. She tried everything but most made her feel worse. She suffered from anxiety and knew it was related.
In her last week's of cancer, one day a nurse asked on a scale of 1 to 10, what's your pain level. She said 8. When asked what a normal day was before the cancer, she said 4 to 5. Her last ten or so years, she stopped searching for a solution to the fibromyalgia and just lived the pain. I never realized her pain was that bad.
In her last week's of cancer, one day a nurse asked on a scale of 1 to 10, what's your pain level. She said 8. When asked what a normal day was before the cancer, she said 4 to 5. Her last ten or so years, she stopped searching for a solution to the fibromyalgia and just lived the pain. I never realized her pain was that bad.
I know every single case is different but did she ever find anything early on that helped?
She never did. At one time, they put her on a morphine patch. All that did was make her sleep. And several pills just caused depression.
There was a guy in ER when one of my parents was dying who somehow cut off two fingers making his kid’s Pinewood Derby car. His entourage was loud and took up most of the surgical waiting area. 1. It’s the kid’s project; 2. Nothing about it requires tools that sharp. Still boggles my mind.
Hahaha parents injuring themselves on kids projects is actually pretty common. I think it’s because there is less embarrassment hurting yourself in attempt to help your child so they are more honest. Clean cuts are at least very easy to manage, jagged cuts like from a chainsaw are a different story. One of the best things that came out of covid is we now limit the number of people who can come in with a patient, sooo much better then dealing with the entourage
Wrong. Have you ever wondered why shaving cuts never seem to stop bleeding? Jagged cuts trigger the clotting response much more than a clean cut.
It's real in the sense that doctors often don't know what's really going on and they have to call it "something".
The human nervous system is extremely complex and poorly understood at the localized level. I've been dealing with a variant of trigeminal neuralgia/trigeminal neuropathic pain for close to 3 decades. I didn't even realize how bad it was, and how long I had been living with it until I had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was 20. Prior to removal I had issues with nasal breathing, headaches, difficulties smiling and neck/head posture...basically a bunch of things I didn't think were related. Three days post removal it was like this vice that was constantly on my head released. I could breath nasally without impedance, felt comfortable standing (no neck and shoulder tightness), and could smile without it being physically awkward. Unfortunately this was short lived and was followed by complications/reaction in my upper left tooth socket that yielded a cystic mass. It didn't take a medical degree to know it wasn't right as it formed within a matter of minutes while waiting for CyRide. It was accompanied with extreme localized pain, impaired nasal breathing,
At the time I had no idea what was going on but I apparently have issues with my trigeminal nerve on the left side of my face. The oral surgeon at the time didn't have a clue, was reluctant to remove the mass, and didn't even take my complaints seriously. It's hard to say for sure but I'm pretty sure there was an exposed nerve which triggered the formation of a neuroma/fibroma, then healed/scarred. I've been to several oral surgeons (before I knew it was nerve), ENTs, pain specialists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons. It wasn't until I got to the neurosurgeons where I felt anyone even had the slightest clue as to what they were dealing with but even then they really didn't know.
Long story short is that modern medicine sucks when there isn't a test, scan, or clear cut symptomatic presentation that leads to a definitive diagnosis. In my case the only thing that showed on scans was an inflamed left trigeminal nerve on the MRN. Well, I already knew it was ****** up but what EXACTLY is causing it? Is the nerve scarred? Is there an impingement further back that caused inflammation and for the nerve to be easily irritated? Is there a form of CRPS or something similar causing a local reaction? Nobody can tell me and all of the "treatments" have been shot in the dark stabs, from medicine to brain surgery, in hopes of alleviating the issue. But throwing **** at a wall hoping it sticks is a more way to address a problem. You have to have better diagnostics to understand it first, something that's lacking due to multiple factors.
So, getting back to the original question, I think fibromyalgia is a diagnosis made in the absense of truly knowing what is going on. In some cases it may be psychosomatic. In others it's some kind of inflammatory or autoimmune issue. In others it could be a nerve issue, as some kind of myelination disorder. But I can tell you with a large percentage of certainty your friend isn't crazy. The medical field sucks at diagnosing the not so obvious. Trust me, I've lived it for over 20 years.
It's real. I have no doubt of that. The fact that "some" physicians may discount it does not make it any less so. I've treated many, many patients with it, and it seemed very real to me.
It likely has a strong psychological component, affecting the physical. But isn't that also true with psychological syndromes? Many of those affect, and become, physical.
Getting into the etiology/physiology of it is complicated, neural pathways, hormones, etc., etc., is difficult and "brainy". I'm retired now!
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If you are being sarcastic, shame on you (or disrespectful). Likewise, if you are blaming the OP for even asking, or bringing up a subject, shame on you as well. JMO.
It doesn't hurt to ask a question, or voice your opinion, respectfully. Others can respond and do the same. That's how we learn, or try to learn anyway.
I've read every post in this thread (as opposed to skipping through gameday threads!) and haven't agreed with everything, but I've learned a lot. I appreciate the serious, thoughtful discussion.
Did you just try to tell an Emergency Physician what type of laceration is easier to treat? Clean cuts are eaiser to suture/staple, leave minimum scaring, and heal quicker. In the example above with the fingers being severed a clean cut makes it much easier to reattach, a jagged cut is extremely difficult if not impossible to put back on.
Physical Therapist, spine (neck and back pain, also quite a bit of chronic pain conditions) specialty, outpatient rehab.
Thank you! I was burnt out. It takes a special person to do that field. Always seemed you were fighting something, productivity / management, computer documentation / changes, yearly coursework (that hospital didn't want to pay for), meetings, team meetings, and constant flow of patients, often more than you could be comfortable with.
For the most part I did well, thought I was pretty good at what I did, always gave 100%. But it took its toll on me with stress.
I laughed, ngl.
I did PT after both pregnancies and I just think it's magic now. I went with a private clinic so she bypassed much of the BS and could focus on patients. Such an interesting field of work, imo.
Honestly, people complain about the cave but many threads are like this when you sort off the clear trolls. Which are here anyway too.
Maybe why Frankenstein was so ataxic!
Some of us are very special / gifted. I was in the middle. Some of the things you could do, in your specialty area, manual therapy, etc, pain management, were really quite (or could be) helpful.
^ yep
^ very much yep
^ Yes.
I started working in the world of disability insurance about 8 years ago and this has become apparent to me. I spend a lot of my time looking at medical records, and the medical "industry" just sucks.
We like to think that our doctors, when we show up for an appointment, have carefully reviewed our records and put thought into it -- like a scientist trying to solve a problem. But that's not true at all. They glance at the chart 30 seconds before they walk in the door. A hyper-conservative approach is almost always recommended. I've seen too many times someone is passed around from place to place and then find out much later they have cancer, Parkinsons, etc.
There's also a big problem of communication. Something I would recommend to everyone with a major health issue -- get your medical records and read them. It's sad that I often seem to know more about a patient's medical condition than the patient themself because I'm the insurance guy who actually gets and reads their records. Are doctors documenting things frequently in records and not telling the patient? Or, in a rush, explaining it in such a shallow way that the patient doesn't take it seriously?
Kinda sad.
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