Share Your Pain Story

999 Replies to “Share Your Pain Story”

1. Hi I’m Crystal I’ve had back pain for years that has been ignored and I have been shamed for it. Last year I had an MRI done and it was bad. I have moderate spinal stenosis and a bone spur that has torn into my spinal cord, causing me the pain along with facet arthritis. Instead of treating me the doctor told me to lose weight and my back would fix itself. I’m only 28 years old and all I was asking for was to be able to play with my kids age 5 and 2.

2. I’ve been living in pain for most of my life. I’m 46 years old and I was on pain medication for years. Now I have been forced to suffer in pain every day without anything. Doctors have taken my medication away from me, making me feel like a drug addict, and made me have to go find other ways to get something for pain. I’ve lost my home and car and even been put in jail because of this. I was on medication for 15 years before all this happened and was yanked off all my medications at once. That made me have four different seizures. It’s not fair. I need my medicine back I can’t live like this anymore.

3. I’m terminally ill now from cardiac and pulmonary disease and Mitochondrial Disease. But my issues started in 1993 after I was attacked by a stalker who continually attacked me for over a year, destroying my cervical and lumbar. My right arm was dislocated in one attack when I was thrown six feet. I had my lumbar spine stepped on and was hung by my hair in separate attacks. I’m in a level 8 to 10 pain constantly due to those along with Fibromyalgia and Elhers Danlos Syndrome and Gastro issues along with it. I’m on five liters of oxygen as well! Awaiting an electric wheelchair!

4. My name is Cassie, 39 years old in Texas. My pain started July 13 2015, after a doctor almost killed me during gastric sleeve surgery. Just since then I’ve had 9 major surgeries, over 4 dozen procedures including 14 drain tubes placed, my lung collapsed in 2016 requiring an emergency thoracotomy where they had to split my ribs to save my life. I had a feeding tube for almost 8 months. I also now have a broken back, been diagnosed with COPD, as well as PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, night terrors. My pain and mental health are connected in a vicious cycle (night terrors cause me to thrash in my sleep causing more pain). I’ve been trying for over 3 years to get into pain management. I’ve used illegal drugs to just be able to function and get out of bed. I’m tired of living like this. I’m just barely surviving life, and every day it’s a mental fight to stay.

5. I’m only 29 years old but I have suffered with chronic pain for many years. I have severe scoliosis and have been in two serious car accidents, breaking both of my arms – one requiring surgery which left me with plates and screws in one arm, and a dirt bike accident that broke my tailbone. I also have been diagnosed with degenerative disks in my lower back following an MRI, as well as widespread joint pain throughout my body.

   For years no doctor would listen to me or hear my cries about how I was struggling day in and day out just to get out of the bed every day. Many told me I was “too young” to be in pain and to exercise more, that it would fix everything. I was already a very active person.

   In the last five years my pain has progressively gotten worse, so much so it has chipped away at my mental health. I became depressed and at times suicidal [because of the chronic pain]. The pain would wake me in my sleep and rob me of all of my energy and positivity. I have two children – a two year old and a newborn, and I was struggling to take care of them and play with them.

   Enough is enough. People living with chronic pain are a special group of people. We live in misery every day, in pain and exhausted, and still are expected to be productive members of society, good mothers, good fathers, and good employees. Yet we are treated like less-than and made to feel guilty about wanting relief. This has to end.

6. In chronic pain since 1987. Autoimmune disease (muscle, skin), 1991 avascular necrosis, 8 major joint replacements, hips both redone, severe spinal stenosis, need crutches to walk, blocked ivc filter, needed 5 6-hour procedures to stent open blocked leg arteries. And now with pain at all time high, doctors are treating me like crap, forcing me down on my meds … don’t give a crap about my suffering. “CDC rules say” wtf – after 35 years CDC dose will kill me. God please, raise up someone to re-look at these rules. We’re all different. Thank you

7. I’m a 73 year old woman. I was born with Spina Bifida Occulta. It was diagnosed when I was 16. Yes! 16. I have had a backache ever since. I am now 73. I have scoliosis. Also five back fusions. I now have a lipoma on my spinal cord which is inoperable, because all the nerves from my bowel and bladder run through it. I have been on pain meds most of my life. I never abused nor was addicted, but they helped me function. When the opioid crisis started they took me off everything. They made me feel like a junkie. I’ve been to three pain managements and they will only give me something for nerve damage. I’m so depressed. I’m not living, I’m existing. Plus I’m taking care of a husband who has dementia. I cry every single day. I don’t want to go on. Please help me! I thought maybe a lawyer could help me or going to the media. I’m desperate!😢
   Ty!
   J.D.

8. I have suffered with severe pain since 1995. I was originally hurt at work. My care was put off for two years. Once I finally got a proper diagnosis, so much scar tissue and damage had been done. I have had over fifty surgeries/procedures. I resorted to having a Spinal Stimulator implant done in 2017 to try and help my pain. It worked great at first, and the doctors drastically cut my medications by two thirds. Well now the stimulator no longer is working, yet I cannot get my medications back. I had a complete removal and replacement of the spinal stimulator done just last September and it is still not working. It is now causing me heart and breathing issues. Nothing was ever fixed, it’s only a bandaid, yet my pain medications were taken away. I am 99% bedridden with severe pain. I have a damaged Brachial Plexus nerve branch bundle.

9. I am now 60 years old. I was diagnosed with lumbar scoliosis at 16 but my parents never did anything about it. I lived an uneven but pain-free life until my late 40s when the curvature became worse and arthritis started to set in. At this age, I was considered too old to successfully correct the curve and the pain was debilitating and persistent.

   I was referred to a pain management specialist who put me through years of non-drug and non-opioid drug treatments including a spinal cord implant which left scar tissue and even more pain. Opioid medications were a last resort, but I reluctantly took them to continue working and have a quality of life. I’ve been on these medications for 10 years, following all the strict rules required to continue them.

   Finally 3 months ago, the clinic I had been with, abruptly closed. The new doctor I was referred to, punitively shamed me for being on opioids. (I was taking 2 medications: one 3 times a day and one for breakthrough.) He told me “pick one! I wont prescribe you both!” His ignorance and lack of compassion has left me with high blood pressure, insomnia and severe pain and has denied me quality of life in what are now, my twilight years.

10. I am so glad that there is this website trying to help people that suffer from chronic pain. My loving wife suffers from chronic pain, and has for almost 10 years now. It has become harder and harder for her to continue to get her needed pain medication so she can function normally during the day due to her interstitial cystitis. I have had to change insurances a few times over the years, and it is always such a nightmare getting her pain medication started again. She has had delays due to policies not wanting to be grandfathered-in and other crap like that. She is a model patient that her pill counts are always right, everything always goes well, yet according to the government and the CDC she is part of the problem with the opioid crisis. I so disagree; the opioid crisis is people that illegally use pain medications for that high. It is not people like my wife that just want to try to have a normal day, or she can possibly enjoy herself for a few moments and not be totally miserable.