I had eight surgeries for a thoracic staph infection in 2020 and developed decent pain tolerance. There’s worse pain than that in a hospital but it was significant along with bipolar depression and PTSD. I’ve never had chronic pain but I did get Shingles three times, each time after an extra strong emotional event.
One of the younger nurses asked me how I was doing it and this is what I told her. When I was done she brightened up and said “I’m gonna think on that!”. I got the impression that it was for her as much as the patients. Nurses are patients too, don’t forget it.
Most people deal with pain by trying to block it, like damming a river. It doesn’t work. The electrical signals coming up your nerves don’t care what you think and a tense mind state … increases the pain. You have to do the opposite. You have to go into it.
It feels vulnerable letting that dam down and yes there’s four feet of floodwater on the other side of it. But look down. You’re already standing in that water, your attempts at reducing it haven’t done anything. This is what it’ll feel like.
I thought this video (no sound) was fascinating: facial expressions of test subjects experiencing pain.
https://youtu.be/iivm8u_WF34?si=IAkMe-e8VDFP_h-8
The other part is slow breathing and it’s required. If you’re not ready to get serious about it, get some oxy.
The first step is to acknowledge the pain psychologically. Yes this exists and it sucks. Then, with the slow breathing instead of a tense dam, you let the waters pass through you. Imagining it as wind works too. This is what people mean when they say “breathe through it.”
Another time a thoracic doctor was pulling vac tape off my chest. It’s a super complicated taping system that wound nurses know well. It’s used to seal the area around a wound for a suction device that I used for months. When I was at home later VNA nurses treated it like gold and I gave them all the extra I got from the insurance company.
So the doctor was pulling this stuff off my chest and it went excruciatingly (literally) slowly because there’s a damn wound underneath. It’s like a slow-motion wax.
Another young nurse was there and she said something, eyes wide, that I think a nurse isn’t supposed to say to a patient. “Doesn’t that hurt!!?” lol. Yea it did but I was breathing and letting it pass through.
In the movies they rip it off in one shot but you can’t do that with an open wound underneath. It’s sloooow.
I dated a woman who used to get waxed … in a different place … by the gentle ladies at the Russian place in NYC. Flip, rip, flip, rip you’re done get out. Mine was minutes.
And yes, the doctor left the bed unlocked so the next nurse fell on me with a sharp, no injuries. Doctors will be doctors. Here’s Steve Carrell getting waxed in the 40 Year old Virgin.
https://youtu.be/6CTSUjT4Xuk?si=XShyQj_lx37wsC5_
I was a low-maintenance patient overall. One day another nurse came in sounding exasperated and said “Do you need anything at all? I feel guilty!” I didn’t. It’s hard to sleep in a hospital because they take vitals every four hours, a nice night nurse will let that go longer. But I was always tired. So I spent my days semi-conscious drifting in and out of sleep with a little phone and TV. Healing takes time and I slipped myself into a kind of hibernation mode.
While I was in the hospital I experienced thirst like I didn’t know existed.
https://iancompton.substack.com/p/thucydides-quote-about-thirst-in?r=606zsa
I put up a post about using neuroplasticity for depression and
put one up about using it for pain and I linked both here.https://iancompton.substack.com/p/neuroplasticity?r=606zsa
Finally when it comes to OTC meds doctors recommend Tylenol + 1. Tylenol kills pain via one pathway and all the others use a different pathway, the same one, so taking more than one of them is useless. So Tylenol plus (Ibuprofen or Naproxen or Aspirin etc).