Chronic Pain: Is it all in their head?

[tx oms]

In patients who have no identifiable anatomic reason for chronic pain, be it TMD, fibromyalgia, vulvadynia, interstitial cystitis, etc, do you think it's a psychological problem or an organic problem that modern medicine has yet to diagnos?

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[toofache32]

In patients who have no identifiable anatomic reason for chronic pain, be it TMD, fibromyalgia, vulvadynia, interstitial cystitis, etc, do you think it's a psychological problem or an organic problem that modern medicine has yet to diagnos?

One of the most interesting explanations (which is still a guess) is that the Psych people have noted that chronic pain patients are more likely to consider everyday stresses to be more significant than regular people with the same stresses. Or something like that. That may have been in Fonseca's 7-Volume series. I can't remember.

So, maybe they are just whiners. But who knows.

 

[TucsonDDS]

Very rairly do I ever take care of a patient with cronic pain that I truely believe is having pain. When you ask most of these patients what their pain is on a scale of 1-10 they will often say it is an "11 or 12" while they are talking on the phone eating a sandwich. Now there are definitely patients who I have taken care of that I truely believe are having pain but they seem to handle it differently, they are still active in there own care for the most part and tend to have a different personality. The ones I believe will also usually rate their pain as a "6 or 7" because they truely know what pain is. If you look at the majority of patients that say they have chronic pain they usually have crappy coping skills, f'd up family lives and support systems, many times they are overweight and they often times don't want to change anything. The majority of times when I have true chronic pain patients they usually have great personalities, good coping skills, strong support systems and they are a joy to take care of. And yes, most (not all) of the time they have something that is medically diagnosed and not just a label like fibromyalgia. I don't know enough about TMJ yet but I do know that I once had a girlfriend who wouldn't give a BJ because it "hurt my TMJ" and she had a crappy family life, poor support system, poor coping skills and other chronic pains that she was free to talk about.

 

[airvent]

lol ...erm, I feel your pain

 

[aphistis]

Very rairly do I ever take care of a patient with cronic pain that I truely believe is having pain. When you ask most of these patients what their pain is on a scale of 1-10 they will often say it is an "11 or 12" while they are talking on the phone eating a sandwich. Now there are definitely patients who I have taken care of that I truely believe are having pain but they seem to handle it differently, they are still active in there own care for the most part and tend to have a different personality. The ones I believe will also usually rate their pain as a "6 or 7" because they truely know what pain is. If you look at the majority of patients that say they have chronic pain they usually have crappy coping skills, f'd up family lives and support systems, many times they are overweight and they often times don't want to change anything. The majority of times when I have true chronic pain patients they usually have great personalities, good coping skills, strong support systems and they are a joy to take care of. And yes, most (not all) of the time they have something that is medically diagnosed and not just a label like fibromyalgia. I don't know enough about TMJ yet but I do know that I once had a girlfriend who wouldn't give a BJ because it "hurt my TMJ" and she had a crappy family life, poor support system, poor coping skills and other chronic pains that she was free to talk about.

Now *that's* what I call a positive contribution to SDN.

 

[lnn2]

..... I once had a girlfriend who wouldn't give a BJ because it "hurt my TMJ" and she had a crappy family life, poor support system, poor coping skills and other chronic pains that she was free to talk about.

What's BJ? Beef Jerky?
I feel your pain, brother It sucks dating a taker!

 

[north2southOMFS]

I don't know enough about TMJ yet but I do know that I once had a girlfriend who wouldn't give a BJ because it "hurt my TMJ" and she had a crappy family life, poor support system, poor coping skills and other chronic pains that she was free to talk about.

Now that might translate to a good treatment methodology to stretch those muscles of mastication and open the joint space in a closed lock pt.

Tx Oms lets start recommending that tx to our thursday afternoon pts. I'm sure they would have no problem with it.