Since medicine considers 85% of back pain "nonspecific" and Dr Landis at the pain consortium has indicated that treatments for pain are "woefully inadequate", all too often medicine does little to help people with pain. There is over 40 years of documentation of neglect in pain care in journals- and the longstanding prejudice that medicine has had toward people with pain continues today. Whether this neglect takes the form of underdiagnosing or misdiagnosing or undertreating or mistreating or dismissing patients claim to have pain-the best thing someone with pain can know that when it comes to modern medicine and pain care its caveat emptor. The government has gone along with and continues to go along with the laissez faire attitude in medicine with regard to pain care. I have had to figh many health care providers to make a decent effort to help people with pain and heard them say to me the person with pain is exaggerating or its mostly a psychological problem. And the simple truth is members of Congress just defer to the health care industry to treat people with pain as they see fit. The federal government and health care industry continue to treat people with pain with too much disregard and so I tell people caveat emptor
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I use this site all the time. but not to replace my Dr. they can have a hard time in telling you the problem. Most of the time they need to run test, take blood ect. So to me this site is for support and to talk to people who may be going though some of the same problems you or family are dealing with. when it comes to my health I want to have as much information on my side as possible. We must be our own adovacate. I have learned so much from this site and try to visit it daily! so Karen and all the others
don't change a thing!!
Karen,
I absolutely agree with you! I once was told by someone something like; "what do your know? Are you a Doctor????!!!"..... No, I responded, I am not a Doctor or a Nurse, I am a former HIV/AIDS Social Worker, but I have dealt with this issue personally because I have been there and done that. I appreciate when I ask or post a question and our members give me their educated opinions, but that is all they are, opinions! I will never take them to heart or will believe that they are a diagnosis because they are not.
I sometimes appreciate and value the opinions of those that have been there more than those of a Doctor or an RN (no offense to our Doctor's here), and it is not because the Doctor's don't know what they are talking about, but it is because this person talking to me has walked a mile or 2 in my shoes and knows how it feels to be living in intractable pain.
But and this is a BIG but, when it comes to issues of symptoms, etc. we should all go visit our Doctor's or a health clinic because nothing can replace a visual examination by a trained Physician, period.
Thanks for all that you and everyone else do here, and thank you for the informative site, keep up the good work!
Millie