Unless you have experienced chronic pain yourself, you can't know what it feels like every day. Since March of 1988, I have never had a single moment when I didn't have extreme or excruciating chronic pain. It is impossible to explain chronic pain to others, because unlike acute pain that comes very quickly and then begins to fade chronic pain just hangs around like a diving suit that you can't get rid of. It doesn't matter what you do, or what doctors you see chronic pain just keeps hanging around. 

I pray for Heavenly Father every day to take away my chronic pain, so I could function more normally. Unfortunately HIS answer so far has been, "no, not now maybe later". I also pray daily that my pain might be reduced. Unfortunately I have not been blessed with a reduction in pain yet.

About 20 years ago I was counseled by our Bishop that I have the chronic pain in my life so that I can help others to understand chronic pain, help them to learn how to live with it, and how to find the positives all around them - even while enduring the most unbelievable pain 24/7/365/lifetime. 

I have had my chronic pain now for over 34 years, and the many doctors I have gone to about it have told me that I will have these chronic pain generators and the pain they create for the rest of my life. None of these doctors have been able to find what causes any of my multiple chronic pain generators. I had nerve conduction studies done, CT Scans, Myleograms (special x-rays with specific contrast that although injected into your spinal cord gives you the taste of shrimp in your mouth), and more, but none of them were able to identify what causes the pain. 

Something that makes every person who has excruciating chronic pain SUFFER extra needlessly are the ludicrous, arbitrary, and capricious rules & laws enacted in response to the people who abused pain management drugs such as morphine, Oxycodone, Valium, and others. Those rules & laws forced doctors to RADICALLY reduce the amount of pain medication that they could prescribe for their patients. Everyone was forced into the same ridiculously LOW dosage levels. Some patients saw a reduction so drastic that they now can receive only 15% (roughly 1/6th) of their previous dosage. 

Something most people don't know because they don't deal with chronic pain, but the actual *goal* for pain management is to reduce the pain by 50%. Under the current laws most patients are lucky if they can realize a 15% reduction considering that they are receiving substantially less medication than they should be.  Doctors are no longer in charge of writing prescriptions for pain management, instead such decisions are made solely by politicians and bureaucrats. Yes there might be a doctor politician, but if they are focused on writing and voting on legislation they can't possibly keep current on all things related to pain management, pain control, dispensing limits that are literally causing chronic pain patients HARM every single day. 

I do know that I was blessed many years ago with the miraculous overnight subconscious ability to use 'biofeedback' to block out a portion of my pain. It can't eliminate all pain, in part because when the pain levels increase or decrease, it disables the biofeedback for a random period of time. If the patient thinks about their pain, or talks about their pain, that also disables the biofeedback. The worst part of the biofeedback stopping, is that you are suddenly facing your pain 110% of normal. It doesn't matter what you do or don't do, when your biofeedback shuts off it is like driving into a 6 foot thick reinforced concrete wall at 3 times the speed of light. It will knock you down drag you around the block a few times and more. But when you get the biofeedback working on your behalf, it is indeed a huge relief. It makes the pain that would otherwise be completely unbearable and would keep you almost bedridden, you can live a somewhat normal life. Somewhat because you still experience at least 50% of your pain, and that level of chronic pain is more than sufficient to keep you from being able to hold a job. 

I hope this long post has given you some insight into what people with excruciating level chronic pain endure every day all day long. The typical chronic pain patient doesn't announce what they go through every day  because they understand that no matter how many people they tell about their pain - it will never decrease their pain, HOWEVER it will CAUSE everyone they tell about their pain to experience severe emotional pain over the fact that their family member or friend is in such terrible agony all the time and worse yet that they are completely unable to alleviate the pain. I have known some people for years before they ever talked in depth about their personal chronic pain story. 

I met someone on AOL (called America OnLine back then) who was totally paralyzed from his waist down from a car accident, back in March of 1992. He totally blew my mind one day when he said he felt bad for me.  I said, but you are a paraplegic and I still have full functionality of all of my extremities. He responded when something that is still very much on my mind these 30 years later. He said yes I am indeed a paraplegic, but I have ZERO PAIN. You on the other hand have extreme chronic pain 24/7. He said he might be restricted as to which physical activities he can do, but he will be able to do those things his body would permit him to do and be pain free while doing it. He continued by saying he was sorry that I would have to endure my chronic pain for the rest of my life. 

From that moment on I vowed that I would not permit myself to wallow in self-pity, dwell on my pain constantly, nor would I be spending my energy making others depressed by burdening their souls with my tale of woe and pain. Instead I wake up every morning (or afternoon if I had difficulty getting to sleep the night before),paste a smile on my face and strive to always portray happiness and even on the very bad days do my best not to burden my family (especially my wife) with the sordid details about my pain that day. Yes I do tell them what is going on if they specifically ask how I am doing, because it would be worse if I lied and said I was fine when they can easily see the grimace on my face. 

If you are someone who is facing lifelong chronic pain and want to talk with someone who understands what you are going through, please message me.  I'd love to talk with you and offer any help I can give you. Always remember that you are not alone in this life, even if you are single! There are people like you and me all over the world and others will surely be willing to share their experiences with you in an effort to help you endure your situation better and to find a way to bring joy back into your life for good. If there are enough people interested in the idea, maybe we can create a group on here to go to and talk amongst those who truly understand what all of us are going through every day. We can grow the group by talking about it outside of MarketHive and grow our MarketHive team at the same time. What do you think? I'm open to ideas that you might have regarding the group idea. 

Copyright April 30, 2022 The Neal and Janet Brown Family Trust, all rights reserved worldwide.