Doctors need to listen

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JB,

I can say that with the experiences I I have had since Ive been injured that

what needs to be addresses first is the problem of doctors not listening to

their patients. I believe that all visits should be audio recorded. Most

injured people have multiple symptoms. When you are hurting in allot of

different places it is almost impossible to identify where the pain is actually

coming from.

Sometimes pain is like a chain reaction especially where muscles are concerned.

I know from reading my doctors medical reports on our visits that the problems

mentioned are things that have to do with his specialty and were not my main

complaint. What interested him the most is what he heard. When everything

hurts everywhere the doctors tend to disregard what you are saying or think you

must be exaggerating. Then they lose interest in helping you. I know I had 3

doctors refuse to release me from work or give me pain medication. My injury

was becoming worse and it was causing me to walk and hold my body in unusual

positions to try and alleviate some of the pain. After a number of weeks this

created more problems and more pain. Every time I went to the doctor something

more was added to the pain mix or something was different. It wasn't until I

threw a fit and was taken off work and given pain medication for a few weeks

that my body had a chance to recover from the trauma of being in constant pain

that I could feel where I was injured.

As I moved one inflamed area would eventually cause the next to become

irritated and so on. My doctor still thinks I'm a nut case and I'm having

difficulty getting treatment for a very real injury but at least when I do I

will be able to tell the doctor the exact area that causes the chain reaction

and not sit and cry about my entire body falling apart. I know in my case and

probably allot of others most of it is my fault. We tend not to go to the

doctors until we are in so much pain we can no longer function.This is confusing

for us and the doctor.

But at the same time It is important to listen to what the patient is saying,

maybe several times over. You can miss a lot when you have decided that who

your talking to isn't rational or can't possibly be having the problems they say

they are. I think if there is a chronic pain epidemic Its because people push

their body's to hard. Most of us work longer hours then we should and ask our

body's to do work that is just flat out physically to hard. Everything has a

stress limit. And again I think most people tend to ignore health problems or

injury's for as long as the can and in many cases its just to late to to really

repair the damage. Liz