I was watching an episode of House. He believed a patient had a growth so immensely tiny that it did not show up on any tests. House wanted his team to remove the unseen growth. (Let's act as though the show makes sense.) Dr. Foreman, his associate, responded "How can we remove something that we don't know is there and is so small it cannot be seen?" House replies "How do you know the wind is real?" Foreman: "You see the effects of it blowing."
I immediately thought of the analogy to those of us who live with chronic pain.
"Doctor, I fell and hurt my leg." "I saw the x-ray, the bone is broken." "Doctor, I am always thirsty and always having to urinate." "I saw the test results, you have diabetes."
vs.
"Doctor, I have pain all the time in my leg and arms." "Your tests show nothing wrong." "Doctor, I have horrendous facial pain. It is there all the time plus it comes on for no reason at all." "I see nothing when I examine you. All your tests are normal."
Lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, among others, do have tests available that will provide objective results. Other pain disorders, like fibromyalgia, or RSD (CRPS) do not. (There is some controversy over whether a fibromyalgia body point tenderness scale is valid or not.)
I do not blame the doctors, at least for the first reaction of 'I cannot help what I do not see is there.' I do blame them when they ignore the effects of the invisible complaint.
People with RSD (CRPS) and fibromyalgia may limp, or have fatigue to a higher level than most, they cannot do what they used to do. Those are symptoms.
I could not touch or tolerate any touch to the area of my face involved in the pain. I flinched when there was any possibility of touch to the pained area. Unable to wash, dirt built up around the eye and on the forehead. I had a dirty orangish brown 1/2 inch mass of soap residue and environmental dirt. (The latter not subjective but the result of my 'subjective' complaint that touch was inordinately painful.)
Yes, sometimes a limp can be faked. Sometimes, a person is dirty. Sometimes fatigue is the result of depression or burning the candles at both ends. But sometimes the limp is protecting the leg from pain, the dirt crusting from being unable to touch, the fatigue because pain refuses to allow for rest or sleep.
How do you know the pain is there? How do you know the wind blows? Look at the effects.
My book.
"Fascinating" Stephen S. Hall. writer, N.Y.Times magazine. "Hard to put down." A.C.P.A., American Chronic Pain Association.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
What is a doctor's truth, what is a patient's?
Years ago, I heard a doctor speaking to a support group. He was discussing neurological issues for those of us with trigeminal neuralgia. In passing, he mentioned x-rays and how people sometimes worry about them and their possible association with certain health risks. He reassured us that getting a few x-rays during our lifetime was not something about which we should be worried.
After the meeting I approached him. "About x-ray risks" I started to say. He immediately interrupted me. "As I said there is no reason to be worried about a few x-rays over your lifetime causing cancer or other medical problems." I looked at him. "Well, I have had probably 500 x-rays." His eyebrows rose as his mouth formed an O shape. "500?" I nodded. "Yes. I've had arteriograms and angiograms, 2 rhizolysis procedures (a closed surgical treatment that relies on repeated x-rays to determine where the needle is placed.) venograms, and cat scans and." He interrupted me again. "That is a lot of x-rays." Then he turned away and started talking with someone else. Did he not want to listen or not want to answer?
It is not a worry I really have, maybe I should but in the scheme of things it would be very low down on my list.
It does make me think of the times doctors tend to pooh-pooh patients when they complain of pain. We are asked "Is it really that bad?" Maybe if we thought about it once asked, we would say, "Oh, you know what, now that you ask, nah, it is not that bad. Never mind."
Sometimes they do not think to ask the follow-up questions.
When I was a teenager my little finger on my left hand really bothered me. It was very bent and had a big red bump towards the side of the joint. Any time I put pressure on it, for instance when I was writing, it would be very, very unpleasant.
Dr. Horvath: It hurts when you write?
Me: Yes, a lot.
Dr. Horvath: Which hand do you write with?
Me: I'm right-handed.
He gave me a whithering look, as though I was the stupidest person on the planet. In those days I had not yet learned to be forceful with a doctor. (He was a doctor, I was merely patient.) "Then it does not bother you when you write." Looked at in his context, I am right handed, it is the left sided finger, it makes sense. What a stupid person I was. My complaint had to be nothing more than made up or an imaginary pain. Maybe typical teenage angst masquerading as finger pain.
I left his office feeling the fool. It never occurred to me to say, 'wait a minute, when I write I hold my left hand against the desk in such a way that I put pressure on that finger.' Of course the answer is the old joke - then don't do that - but I did not think of it. I only knew I had terrible discomfort with a finger that had a big bump in the joint and I wanted help for it.
All he had needed to do was follow up. "Then how is it that it is your left finger that hurts when you write?"
I had a neurologist write in my chart "There are days like today when I believe in her pain." I saw the chart years later: rarely does a patient get an opportunity to know what they have written in this 'for eyes of all but the patient' paperwork. He had seen the surgical reports that proved the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia. He was aware of the reason I had my trigeminal neuralgia, the birth defect, and yet he did not want to accept my reports of pain. Had he told me this outright it could have saved a lot of aggravation for both of us. I would have stopped being his patient and he did not have to have a patient he obviously did not trust.
500 x-rays? Disabling pain? It can be true. Don't surmise. Ask me and then we will both be on the same page.
After the meeting I approached him. "About x-ray risks" I started to say. He immediately interrupted me. "As I said there is no reason to be worried about a few x-rays over your lifetime causing cancer or other medical problems." I looked at him. "Well, I have had probably 500 x-rays." His eyebrows rose as his mouth formed an O shape. "500?" I nodded. "Yes. I've had arteriograms and angiograms, 2 rhizolysis procedures (a closed surgical treatment that relies on repeated x-rays to determine where the needle is placed.) venograms, and cat scans and." He interrupted me again. "That is a lot of x-rays." Then he turned away and started talking with someone else. Did he not want to listen or not want to answer?
It is not a worry I really have, maybe I should but in the scheme of things it would be very low down on my list.
It does make me think of the times doctors tend to pooh-pooh patients when they complain of pain. We are asked "Is it really that bad?" Maybe if we thought about it once asked, we would say, "Oh, you know what, now that you ask, nah, it is not that bad. Never mind."
Sometimes they do not think to ask the follow-up questions.
When I was a teenager my little finger on my left hand really bothered me. It was very bent and had a big red bump towards the side of the joint. Any time I put pressure on it, for instance when I was writing, it would be very, very unpleasant.
Dr. Horvath: It hurts when you write?
Me: Yes, a lot.
Dr. Horvath: Which hand do you write with?
Me: I'm right-handed.
He gave me a whithering look, as though I was the stupidest person on the planet. In those days I had not yet learned to be forceful with a doctor. (He was a doctor, I was merely patient.) "Then it does not bother you when you write." Looked at in his context, I am right handed, it is the left sided finger, it makes sense. What a stupid person I was. My complaint had to be nothing more than made up or an imaginary pain. Maybe typical teenage angst masquerading as finger pain.
I left his office feeling the fool. It never occurred to me to say, 'wait a minute, when I write I hold my left hand against the desk in such a way that I put pressure on that finger.' Of course the answer is the old joke - then don't do that - but I did not think of it. I only knew I had terrible discomfort with a finger that had a big bump in the joint and I wanted help for it.
All he had needed to do was follow up. "Then how is it that it is your left finger that hurts when you write?"
I had a neurologist write in my chart "There are days like today when I believe in her pain." I saw the chart years later: rarely does a patient get an opportunity to know what they have written in this 'for eyes of all but the patient' paperwork. He had seen the surgical reports that proved the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia. He was aware of the reason I had my trigeminal neuralgia, the birth defect, and yet he did not want to accept my reports of pain. Had he told me this outright it could have saved a lot of aggravation for both of us. I would have stopped being his patient and he did not have to have a patient he obviously did not trust.
500 x-rays? Disabling pain? It can be true. Don't surmise. Ask me and then we will both be on the same page.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Where does the pain go (when you know it is still there)?
Sometimes when I wake the eye is hurting already, the lid swollen, sore and on the verge of pain. Other times it is okay until I start to read or use the computer. Either way I have a choice, or so it seems. Read more, write more, do almost anything that requires the eye to move.
I am bored, I want to write a post or answer email, I want to check and see if you have been here, maybe even sending me a comment.
I do whatever the choice is. The discomfort is there, on the periphery. "Just a few more minutes" I say to myself or outloud. "Just a little bit more."
I go on, the pain builds. Just another paragraph, just one more email, just one more sentence. Then I promise myself I will stop.
Instead I persevere. The pain is there but as my interest builds in what I am doing it ebbs and flows, in my consciousness, outside of my attention, in and out it goes.
It is a strange thing. Sometimes I feel the pain but as I become more and more immersed in what I am doing I become unaware of it. Finally I finish what I am doing. The pain is overwhelming, to the point of nausea.
How is it that the knowledge of it got away from me, that the feeling was bandaged by a high level of concentration? How is it that it is really there, that the stopping of what I am doing acts as the fast ripping off of an adhesive covering? How is it that I am now in exquisite pain, pain that seemed not to be there not more than a second or two ago? (And what an oxymoron - exqusite and pain together.)
It is said you do not remember pain. Women who have children tell me it is a lie that you forget the pain of childbirth.
I no longer have the horrendous face splitting, knife cutting pain that is the 'tic' of trigeminal neuralgia. I could remember it but the idea of even trying to induces a panic in me. No. No. my mind screams at me. Don't you dare go there! I obey, knowing that remembering is the last thing I want to do. Why invite in a pain that is gone, even if the invitation is only to memory? I do not want to go there. I do not need to go there.
But the opposite seems to be the case when it comes to, I cannot say not feeling the pain, but maybe not acknowledging it. The mind lets you be free for a while as you do what you normally cannot. Reading too long, talking to a few people at once and watching them with only the movement of your eyes, writing a blog post. The pain is there, and growing, whether I am aware of it or not. Maybe the unconscious protects me from it as the conscious mind proceeds, at least for longer than is good for me, to let me do what I want.
Maybe it is like hypnosis.
I am a hypnotherapist. When I work with clients I describe hypnosis as being a state where your relaxation level allows the conscious mind to step aside while I talk to your unconscious mind. Usually trance state takes you to level of inattention, like when you do not know how you got from point A to point B while you are driving and then you suddenly became aware. Your conscious mind has decided it is time to become attentive or it sees the redlight or stop sign.
Maybe the pain is the red light. Maybe at some point the pain becomes so in need of attention that it can no longer stay hidden in the background.
I do not know, of course. One of the biggest issues for me, in dealing with the pain, heck, in dealing with life, is finding explanations, or coming up with a theory, any theory that might explain how, why?
For tonight this one will have to do.
I am bored, I want to write a post or answer email, I want to check and see if you have been here, maybe even sending me a comment.
I do whatever the choice is. The discomfort is there, on the periphery. "Just a few more minutes" I say to myself or outloud. "Just a little bit more."
I go on, the pain builds. Just another paragraph, just one more email, just one more sentence. Then I promise myself I will stop.
Instead I persevere. The pain is there but as my interest builds in what I am doing it ebbs and flows, in my consciousness, outside of my attention, in and out it goes.
It is a strange thing. Sometimes I feel the pain but as I become more and more immersed in what I am doing I become unaware of it. Finally I finish what I am doing. The pain is overwhelming, to the point of nausea.
How is it that the knowledge of it got away from me, that the feeling was bandaged by a high level of concentration? How is it that it is really there, that the stopping of what I am doing acts as the fast ripping off of an adhesive covering? How is it that I am now in exquisite pain, pain that seemed not to be there not more than a second or two ago? (And what an oxymoron - exqusite and pain together.)
It is said you do not remember pain. Women who have children tell me it is a lie that you forget the pain of childbirth.
I no longer have the horrendous face splitting, knife cutting pain that is the 'tic' of trigeminal neuralgia. I could remember it but the idea of even trying to induces a panic in me. No. No. my mind screams at me. Don't you dare go there! I obey, knowing that remembering is the last thing I want to do. Why invite in a pain that is gone, even if the invitation is only to memory? I do not want to go there. I do not need to go there.
But the opposite seems to be the case when it comes to, I cannot say not feeling the pain, but maybe not acknowledging it. The mind lets you be free for a while as you do what you normally cannot. Reading too long, talking to a few people at once and watching them with only the movement of your eyes, writing a blog post. The pain is there, and growing, whether I am aware of it or not. Maybe the unconscious protects me from it as the conscious mind proceeds, at least for longer than is good for me, to let me do what I want.
Maybe it is like hypnosis.
I am a hypnotherapist. When I work with clients I describe hypnosis as being a state where your relaxation level allows the conscious mind to step aside while I talk to your unconscious mind. Usually trance state takes you to level of inattention, like when you do not know how you got from point A to point B while you are driving and then you suddenly became aware. Your conscious mind has decided it is time to become attentive or it sees the redlight or stop sign.
Maybe the pain is the red light. Maybe at some point the pain becomes so in need of attention that it can no longer stay hidden in the background.
I do not know, of course. One of the biggest issues for me, in dealing with the pain, heck, in dealing with life, is finding explanations, or coming up with a theory, any theory that might explain how, why?
For tonight this one will have to do.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Blogger has had some problems this morning
To my readers, Blogger had some sort of problem where the last posts written since Wednesday a.m.have been removed from, evidently, all their blogs. I apologize that the last one about sad and S.A.D. is not here but hope it will be returned sometime today.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
I'm sad from S.A.D.
Seasonal affective disorder:"Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that is tied to seasons of the year. Most people with SAD are depressed only during the late fall and winter (sometimes called the "winter blues") and not during the spring or summer. A small number, however, are depressed only during the late spring and summer." *
I do not really have it, at least not to the level required for a psychiatric diagnosis. It is usually associated with the reduced number of sunlight hours. I do not see an explanation for the folks who have it in summer and spring.
I know my reason.
The spring and summer have longer days. I wake and the sunlight streams through the windows. It is so bright the curtains are no foil for it.
My first thought: what a gorgeous day. My second thought: the bright light hurts my eye already and I have yet to do anything. The third thought: what am I going to do with all the hours in this day?
I have choir rehearsal tonight. Yay! And yet, it is a pain causing activity. I will be with people and a part of something. I will also need to take codeine and fight the effects of the pill and the pain. Enjoyment and anticipation become pain and worry.
Sometimes I think I need to join some kind of a group. I do not have folks here that I can call beforehand or on a whim and say "Let's go out to the store or for coffee." Most people work. Those who do not seem to have full schedules. I want a full schedule. I also want to have Donald Trump's money and a house made of gold.
Maybe it is age or fatigue. I find the fear of the pain getting worse, keeping me tethered to my house.
It is an amazing thing. When the pain was at its worse, when the idea of a breeze or a touch setting off the pain, I feel like I did more. Memory is funny. Maybe I did. No, I know I did but doing so involved being on high levels of narcotics: feeling tired, fuzzy, dry mouthed all day long.
The pain, now only in and around my eye, has me fighting against taking the meds - struggling with the thought of taking even one - much more than I think I ever did. I do not know why. All along I have felt brain surgery is for something horrendous, like cancer, not 'just' for pain. Despite the 12 surgeries a part of me still feels that way. I am the queen of denial.
Narcotics, even the lowest level is for something gigundous, not 'just' because I used my eye. And yet, there it is. It is the only thing to be done if I want to do something, something I am not really sure helps, other than to give me a false sense of control.
So, I sit here in my house. I keep the computer on, sometimes stay sitting in front of it but fighting to keep from actively using it continuously.
I look at the clock. Let's see, it is 2:00. Only 6 hours until dusk: and I cannot be out then because I cannot drive at night.
Today Rachel is picking me up to go to choir. 5 hours until I need to get ready. Maybe I could go out. Go to the store for something. No. That will make the pain worse. It is too sunny and if I look at a lot of items or go up and down the aisles I will need to take a pill. I am already annoyed at myself and the pain because I had to take a codeine this morning. Choir will mean having to take much more than I want to for one day.
So I am sad: sad that pain has robbed me of so much, just because the day requires me to use my eyes, even when I am doing nothing. S.A.D. because the beautiful day, the wonderful season, increases my sense of loss.
(I like to try and end even depressing posts or stories in 'real life' with a smile or joke. It was hard to find one for this post but then it came to me. Not a big one. For some reason the idea of Beauty and the beast occurred to me. Spring the beauty, pain the beast. It worked out in the story. Maybe there is a way for spring and I to also become friends and partners.
_____________________________________
*http://www.emedicinehealth.com/seasonal_depression_sad/article_em.htm
I do not really have it, at least not to the level required for a psychiatric diagnosis. It is usually associated with the reduced number of sunlight hours. I do not see an explanation for the folks who have it in summer and spring.
I know my reason.
The spring and summer have longer days. I wake and the sunlight streams through the windows. It is so bright the curtains are no foil for it.
My first thought: what a gorgeous day. My second thought: the bright light hurts my eye already and I have yet to do anything. The third thought: what am I going to do with all the hours in this day?
I have choir rehearsal tonight. Yay! And yet, it is a pain causing activity. I will be with people and a part of something. I will also need to take codeine and fight the effects of the pill and the pain. Enjoyment and anticipation become pain and worry.
Sometimes I think I need to join some kind of a group. I do not have folks here that I can call beforehand or on a whim and say "Let's go out to the store or for coffee." Most people work. Those who do not seem to have full schedules. I want a full schedule. I also want to have Donald Trump's money and a house made of gold.
Maybe it is age or fatigue. I find the fear of the pain getting worse, keeping me tethered to my house.
It is an amazing thing. When the pain was at its worse, when the idea of a breeze or a touch setting off the pain, I feel like I did more. Memory is funny. Maybe I did. No, I know I did but doing so involved being on high levels of narcotics: feeling tired, fuzzy, dry mouthed all day long.
The pain, now only in and around my eye, has me fighting against taking the meds - struggling with the thought of taking even one - much more than I think I ever did. I do not know why. All along I have felt brain surgery is for something horrendous, like cancer, not 'just' for pain. Despite the 12 surgeries a part of me still feels that way. I am the queen of denial.
Narcotics, even the lowest level is for something gigundous, not 'just' because I used my eye. And yet, there it is. It is the only thing to be done if I want to do something, something I am not really sure helps, other than to give me a false sense of control.
So, I sit here in my house. I keep the computer on, sometimes stay sitting in front of it but fighting to keep from actively using it continuously.
I look at the clock. Let's see, it is 2:00. Only 6 hours until dusk: and I cannot be out then because I cannot drive at night.
Today Rachel is picking me up to go to choir. 5 hours until I need to get ready. Maybe I could go out. Go to the store for something. No. That will make the pain worse. It is too sunny and if I look at a lot of items or go up and down the aisles I will need to take a pill. I am already annoyed at myself and the pain because I had to take a codeine this morning. Choir will mean having to take much more than I want to for one day.
So I am sad: sad that pain has robbed me of so much, just because the day requires me to use my eyes, even when I am doing nothing. S.A.D. because the beautiful day, the wonderful season, increases my sense of loss.
(I like to try and end even depressing posts or stories in 'real life' with a smile or joke. It was hard to find one for this post but then it came to me. Not a big one. For some reason the idea of Beauty and the beast occurred to me. Spring the beauty, pain the beast. It worked out in the story. Maybe there is a way for spring and I to also become friends and partners.
_____________________________________
*http://www.emedicinehealth.com/seasonal_depression_sad/article_em.htm
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Put your shoulders down
A few weeks ago I had to get an x-ray. The technician instructed me to "Put your shoulders down." I tried. No good. "Can you please lower your shoulders?" I tried again. Nothing. The film was going to be as good as it could get with my shoulders raised high and squared.
When I awaken my whole body is tight. My knees lock, my shoulders and back are tight with tension. I try to do a whole body relaxation tightening everything. Hold it. Hold it. I instruct myself. Tighter, tighter, tighter still. Keep going. My teeth clench, gritting with exertion. Tighter, Just when you think you cannot hold it any longer you can hold it even tighter still. Then, as I learned to do, and as I have taught others to do, I say to myself Now, as fast as you can, let it go. I release my body but the muscles do not want to let go. Within a second or two every ounce of tightness has returned.
When you do not say "Ouch" outloud, when you try and hide your pain, emotional and physical, it has to have an outlet somewhere. For me it is all of my body, the enamel on my teeth worn through in places from the gritting - awake and asleep. My breathing is off because I am so tight in my chest. At times I literally forget to breathe, a habit held over from when I had my first chronic pain issue.
When I was 19, while driving, my left thigh went into a severe cramp. I pulled over as I waited for it to subside.
The rest of the day was painfree: I thought I was fine. My friend and I arrived at the hotel and quickly fell into bed and asleep. The next morning my traveling companion asked how I had slept. "Fine. Thanks." "No, you didn't. You woke me with yells of pain. You kept crying out "My leg, my leg hurts."
Soon the whole leg was in pain. I had trouble walking and took to using crutches. Despite the obvious I insisted I was okay. Inside of myself I was not. I learned as a child not to admit to pain. I was not going to do it now. Instead, as I tried to maneuver upstairs or just down the hall, I held in the sounds and with it my breath. After all, sounds are made on the whoosh of an exhale. Don't exhale = no pain noise.
It turned out I had developed a spontaneous stoppage in one of my knee vessels. It started out of the blue and stopped the same way but some of the pain continued. Up the stairs, for instance, stop breathing. Try to run, hold your breath. No pain, no gain? No, no sound, no pain.
The habit stayed with me. Once the pain of the trigeminal neuralgia started, my body, especially my shoulders, took the brunt of the 'hold in the pain' behavior. Higher and higher, tighter and tighter I held my shoulders. Fence in that pain. Keep it quiet. Don't let it breathe.
I am trying to teach myself to breathe no matter if there is pain or not. The lesson is so well learnt that I forget to breathe during a walk or even talking. My brother, many years ago, told me he would get me breathing lessons for a Christmas present. Maybe that is not such a bad idea.
Maybe the better idea is learning to let go. Accepting that it is okay to let the pain out in words and sounds. Maybe, finally, it is time to give my shoulders, body, and mind a rest from all the holding it in.
When I awaken my whole body is tight. My knees lock, my shoulders and back are tight with tension. I try to do a whole body relaxation tightening everything. Hold it. Hold it. I instruct myself. Tighter, tighter, tighter still. Keep going. My teeth clench, gritting with exertion. Tighter, Just when you think you cannot hold it any longer you can hold it even tighter still. Then, as I learned to do, and as I have taught others to do, I say to myself Now, as fast as you can, let it go. I release my body but the muscles do not want to let go. Within a second or two every ounce of tightness has returned.
When you do not say "Ouch" outloud, when you try and hide your pain, emotional and physical, it has to have an outlet somewhere. For me it is all of my body, the enamel on my teeth worn through in places from the gritting - awake and asleep. My breathing is off because I am so tight in my chest. At times I literally forget to breathe, a habit held over from when I had my first chronic pain issue.
When I was 19, while driving, my left thigh went into a severe cramp. I pulled over as I waited for it to subside.
The rest of the day was painfree: I thought I was fine. My friend and I arrived at the hotel and quickly fell into bed and asleep. The next morning my traveling companion asked how I had slept. "Fine. Thanks." "No, you didn't. You woke me with yells of pain. You kept crying out "My leg, my leg hurts."
Soon the whole leg was in pain. I had trouble walking and took to using crutches. Despite the obvious I insisted I was okay. Inside of myself I was not. I learned as a child not to admit to pain. I was not going to do it now. Instead, as I tried to maneuver upstairs or just down the hall, I held in the sounds and with it my breath. After all, sounds are made on the whoosh of an exhale. Don't exhale = no pain noise.
It turned out I had developed a spontaneous stoppage in one of my knee vessels. It started out of the blue and stopped the same way but some of the pain continued. Up the stairs, for instance, stop breathing. Try to run, hold your breath. No pain, no gain? No, no sound, no pain.
The habit stayed with me. Once the pain of the trigeminal neuralgia started, my body, especially my shoulders, took the brunt of the 'hold in the pain' behavior. Higher and higher, tighter and tighter I held my shoulders. Fence in that pain. Keep it quiet. Don't let it breathe.
I am trying to teach myself to breathe no matter if there is pain or not. The lesson is so well learnt that I forget to breathe during a walk or even talking. My brother, many years ago, told me he would get me breathing lessons for a Christmas present. Maybe that is not such a bad idea.
Maybe the better idea is learning to let go. Accepting that it is okay to let the pain out in words and sounds. Maybe, finally, it is time to give my shoulders, body, and mind a rest from all the holding it in.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Mathematics and my implant and hope
I have a brain stimulator implant.
The main chip is attached to the covering of my brain, Wires are connected from a battery in my chest up to the chip. The battery was dying and I knew I had to get a new one. I put it off feeling that I was getting very little, if any, benefit. The change is simple. The battery sits directly under the skin. It is mainly a matter of pulling out the old and putting a new one in the pocket that remains.
The implant works by giving off a stimulation that hopefully interferes or impedes the pain signals that the brain and nerves give off. (This is not the best explanation but it is ok for now.)
The stimulation can be changed in a number of ways: for instance how often it is on, how strong the level of stimulation, among many other options. I just tried to figure out the possible number of combinations and permutations but I did not have a clue how to do it (even after googling and clicking a whole bunch of math sites.) I have no doubt the ultimate number of possibilities are easily in the thousands.
The problem with that is the ultimate question. When do you give up hope? Or, do you ever give up hope?
I have trouble accepting the pain, accepting tomorrow will be the same as today. I know it is healthier to accept what is than to not. Accept the pain, the level of disability, the effect on my life. But, but what if just when I say "Uncle.", when I give up and accept, maybe the next combination will be the one.
Are hope and acceptance mutually exclusive? I do not know. I do know I just changed some of the options again last night and am breathlessly waiting for it to hit and stop the pain.
The main chip is attached to the covering of my brain, Wires are connected from a battery in my chest up to the chip. The battery was dying and I knew I had to get a new one. I put it off feeling that I was getting very little, if any, benefit. The change is simple. The battery sits directly under the skin. It is mainly a matter of pulling out the old and putting a new one in the pocket that remains.
The implant works by giving off a stimulation that hopefully interferes or impedes the pain signals that the brain and nerves give off. (This is not the best explanation but it is ok for now.)
The stimulation can be changed in a number of ways: for instance how often it is on, how strong the level of stimulation, among many other options. I just tried to figure out the possible number of combinations and permutations but I did not have a clue how to do it (even after googling and clicking a whole bunch of math sites.) I have no doubt the ultimate number of possibilities are easily in the thousands.
The problem with that is the ultimate question. When do you give up hope? Or, do you ever give up hope?
I have trouble accepting the pain, accepting tomorrow will be the same as today. I know it is healthier to accept what is than to not. Accept the pain, the level of disability, the effect on my life. But, but what if just when I say "Uncle.", when I give up and accept, maybe the next combination will be the one.
Are hope and acceptance mutually exclusive? I do not know. I do know I just changed some of the options again last night and am breathlessly waiting for it to hit and stop the pain.
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