House of Pain

Things are starting to go a more smoothly now. Apparently, a crucial step was missing from the protocol I was trying to work from before. Sometimes a simple dilution step can make all the difference! Obviously, this meant I had to re-do the experiment... You see, even though the rest of the experiment proceeded as intended, the aliquots which were produced by it were far too concentrated for the spectrophotometer to measure the samples. Fortunately, this was an easy fix; do it over with the dilution step. The isotherm I plotted with my data looked much better than the first; smaller error bars, most points fit the overall pattern, no negative concentrations... Now I have to wait for my PI's 2 cents before I either break into a happy-dance or have a nervous breakdown.

I still haven't heard anything from University Housing about getting reimbursed for the spoiled food I had to throw away a few days ago. Since it IS summer, it's possible that the manager I wrote to is away on vacation. A lot of people seem to be away at the moment. Weeks Hall is looking more like a ghost town these days. I haven't seen most of the people I met during interviews last March since I got here and most of the people I have seen since arriving in Madison, have only cropped up once. To be honest, it's getting a bit lonely around here! A large portion of the department happens to be at a conference in Switzerland at the moment too. Lucky ducks!

Tomorrow I go for my first appointment at my new pain clinic. It's just a general consult before they officially take over maintaining my implants (since the pump covers the pain so well, there won't be much else for them to do). I've been on the phone a lot this week with medical staff who have all sorts of questions about my history. I guess I can understand. I mean, most people who've been through what I have aren't working; they're on disability. I don't look sick and I don't know if there are any other young adults out there at all who have been through a nightmare like mine. In fact, one nurse said to me, "I'm surprised you don't have post-traumatic stress disorder!"

The typical lifestyle of a chronic pain patient who isn't receiving effective pain management

It truly is a miracle that I'm even here at all. Millions of people around the world are suffering from chronic pain but most never find adequate pain management-- even after years of actively seeking it out. I suffered in agony for 7 long years before finding my way to Brigham & Women's Hospital's Pain Management Center (and that was after wasting a year-and-a-half at another Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, Massachusetts General Hospital where they have an initiative called, MGH Cares About Pain Relief“ which appeared to contradict what happened in their clinic).

TV character Dr. House from the TV show, "House"; popping pills as if they were candy (a trademark gesture repeated ad nauseam throughout every episode of the show). Most chronic pain patients find this character to be an offensive stereotype of a chronic pain patient.

Society isn't exactly making it easy for pain patients to recover either. With pop culture making a mockery of us through TV shows like “House“, the DEA criminalizing our dependence on (not addiction to) Schedule II narcotics (and all the hoop-jumping & red tape that goes with that), the financial fallout associated with any chronic illness in this nation, and ignorance by medical professionals and the general public alike (if no one teaches them, how will they ever learn?), patients find themselves having to treat pain management as a full-time occupation. So much manpower and talent wasted! It's truly one of the most understated tragedies of modern medicine.

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