Though I'm sure most here can attest to, those who've never experienced that kind of pain will too often categorize it as "whining." I worked in hospitals and, of all of the populations I saw in hospitals, I think it was those with chronic pain who got the least understanding & empathy from medical staff. There were always issues around drug use for those who had to rely on opioids to dull pain -- I could hear the antipathy in the voices & approach to the some patients in some medical professionals. And it most certainly affected care and psychological status. Not only were people having to deal with constant, horrific pain but also with too many hostile environments, which of course made the pain worse!
As I've said elsewhere, I have little chronic pain associated with MS and what pain I have, i so far have been able to alleviate pretty easily. (My pain comes from spasms......heat REALLY helps.....as does tiny amounts and infrequent use of medical cannabis!) I recently had surgery to remove a large ovarian tumor (it turned out to be "low-malignant" with zero spread....I got VERY lucky.....OvCa killed Mom) -- so I had the total hysterectomy, etc. I remember Mom taking lots of percocet after her surgery, which I think actually made it worse for her -- it's constipating, which is one of the problems after that surgery and increasing that increases the pain, IMO. I took a grand total of 3 of the 45 percocets prescribed after my surgery. Like you, I hate the way they make me feel. And I didn't want to make the pain worse by making the constipation worse, which is where a large portion of my pain came from. BUT twice it was truly counterproductive not to take the meds! I was in eye-popping pain and, despite being pretty damn good at using behavioral techniques to lessen pain, it just wasn't enough. In both instances, I really didn't do myself any favors by trying to wait it out -- I think the pain just plain got worse than it had to be and I went from in pain to in agony!
My heart truly goes out to those in chronic pain. The only other time I had any true pain was going back to work the day after foot surgery, which was against my doc's advice. Within short order, I was in agony and couldn't focus on anything I was doing! And when I think that people have to put up with that day in and day out, sometimes all over their bodies......OMG, I really do have heartfelt admiration for the degrees to which people are able to keep on keeping on, even when that means just getting out of bed, going to PT and coming home to crawl back into bed! That's a tremendous amount when you're in that kind of pain! It affects every aspect of life -- how can that be a little thing you never "whine" about? Talking and venting is a good thing.
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