Posted by bob on July 22, 2001, at 12:10:04
In reply to Physical pain, posted by AKC on July 22, 2001, at 8:44:52
> As some of you are aware from my post on PSB, I am currently (slowly) reading "The Noonday Demon." I am in the chapter on breakdowns, and the author's experience of suffering breakdowns after suffering intense physical pain.
>
> This has me thinking (and nervous). I was already very depressed when I had my gallbladder go south. It was unexpected and very intense pain. I had the unfortunate experience of a primary care physician thinking I was just after pain meds (I had recently relocated and this was a new doc who just saw my history of alcoholism and recovery). My tests were coming back at best ambiguous. I would go to the emergency room when I would have acute attacks - the er people believed me and would shoot me full of demoral and would give pain meds. I luckily had to change docs because this doc dropped my hmo - so after three weeks of physical hell, surgery was scheduled and my gallbladder was removed, and the physical recovery only took about a week (they were able to use the lathroscope).
>
> However, after the surgery I went from a bad depression, into suicidal hell - and about three weeks later took every pill I had on hand. Luckily, shortly after doing so, I started to panic and called 911 myself - I wanted the pain to stop, but truly didn't want to die.
>
> I am scared because currently I am doing wonderful - as I have shared on this board. But, as life is so great at doing, I am having some physical problems, specifically, I have a knee that is causing my a lot of problems. It has been messed up since I was a teenager. I have had it operated on in the past. But for whatever reason, it has gone really bad over the past two months. And reading Solomon's stuff on how pain is a trigger for him, even when he was on meds, it made me scared.
>
> So I was wondering about other's experiences with pain and its effects on your meds. I so want this good time to last a while - I don't know if it was the pain, the pain meds, the general anethestics, or a combination of all of the above, or the fact I was already deep in a depression that led to the suicide attempt. There were so many variables. But most importantly - I just don't want to get depressed again. Right now, the pain is tolerable. I guess, I just am a little afraid now and would like some words of wisdom.
>
> AKCI read "The Noonday Demon". I thought is was a reasonable book, but I don't know how uplifting it is, especially for people like us that already have a problem. It is natural to start worrying that the experiences people have in his stories could somehow happen to you. I too started worrying about things like that when I was reading it. Some of the things he tells about in there are quite horrific really. After I finished the book, it was on my mind for some weeks. It's good to know about other people's pain so that one doesn't feel so alone - but it's a double edged sword, especially when exposed to extreme cases like the ones he lays out. Maybe you should put the book down for awhile and come back to it when for feel differently.
Also, I don't necessarily think that his "pain trigger" for breakdowns would have any indications for you necessarily. His breakdown was more complicated than mere pain I believe - as he had a bad experience in the hospital (at least one if not two actually).
Bob
poster:bob
thread:71325
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010720/msgs/71354.html