This Is Not Chronic Pain
What Is Chronic Pain?
Chronic Pain is when your body keeps hurting months, or even years after an injury. It can also accompany a chronic health condition, such as Arthritis. Common types of chronic pain include: Arthritis, back pain, neck pain, cancer pain near a tumour, headaches, pain in scar tissue, fibromyalgia and Neurogenic pain from damage to nerves. Injuries and disease can cause changes to your body that can leave you more sensitive to pain. These changes can stay in place even after you have healed from the original injury. A broken bone can leave you with chronic pain.
I suffer with chronic pain in both of my feet. In 2006, a plate fell off a kitchen surface and smashed on my right foot. It severed the extensor tendon. Despite corrective surgery and rehabilitative physiotherapy, I have had chronic pain in my right foot for years. I also suffer with Achilles Tendonitis in my left heel. This developed as a side effect from taking Levofloxacin, (Levaquin.) Both conditions need management and pain control. This is chronic pain. It is sustained pain after an injury. I may never be pain free. I have to control the amount of walking that I do and I have to take intermittent pain relief, and learn when to rest. Pain management is appropriate for this condition. There are many other types of debilitating chronic pain that need managing in similar ways.
Causation of Pain
Pain is often a symptom, and a cause for pain must be identified.
Aetiology; Medicine; the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.
Most diseases and conditions have a cause that don’t just need managing, but which need intervention. Without treatment, the condition worsens and the disease can create permanent damage to the body. I understand that causes for diseases are sometimes difficult to find, particularly when there is little unequivocal evidence, but ten years is a long time to be searching for a cause. I am tired of seeing Unidentified Aetiology? written on Blood Test request forms, when are sent to laboratories. They come back from laboratories with no information, even when my neutophil and White Blood Count count is raised. My facial pain is not chronic pain. I am on a quest to find an aetiology and cause for my pain. Pathology has been found in tissue histology, scans, ultrasound examinations and blood tests. There must be a cause.
Treatment Not Management
It frustrates me when Medical Consultants refer to my problem as chronic pain or ‘complex pain syndrome.’ It excuses laziness to not have to diagnose and treat the problem. Three Pain Management clinics have now refused to see me on the grounds that I was ‘not suitable for their service.’ Their refusal to accept me onto their service suggests that my condition is not one that just needs ‘managing,’ but which needs treating. Even when pain management clinics reject referrals, my case is left unresolved, and it gets closed down.
Aetiology
I am certain that the aetiology behind my facial pain is infection and residual inflammation. There have been numerous raises over the years with my neutrophils, White Blood Count, and Mean Corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, (MCHC,) as well as Haemoglobin count. These abnormal raises have never been applied in the search for a diagnosis. These blood tests are available to view on the Download page. My left ptosis, (collapsed levitator) and the malfunction and parenchymal damage found in my parotid gland is more than likely to be caused by infection or inflammation, as cancer has been ruled out. Another clue, pointing to infection being the likely cause, is that reactive lymph nodes were found in the tissue pathology of my parotid gland. Reactive lymph nodes are normally a sign that the body is fighting an infection.
What is a reactive lymph node? (medicalnewstoday.com)
If my facial pain is indefinitely dismissed as ‘chronic pain,’ I will be living with pain for the rest my life and this potential infection will eat away at my facial tissue. I do not want this to happen.
I need for Medical Consultants to stop using the chronic pain ticket as an excuse for doing nothing. It is time for the pathology that has been found to be examined, so that my condition can be diagnosed and properly treated. Ten years is a long time to be seeking answers. I need to know what can and what can’t be done, to improve things, and whether or not there is long-term damage to the soft tissue and muscles in my face.
Pathology
- A collapsed levitator, left ptosis
- Periocular pain and swelling
- Consistently raised White Blood Count, raised neutrophils and MCHC.
- Parotid gland malfunction and parenchymal damage: Sialiolithiasis.
- Masseter muscle enlargement.
- Buccal fat pad abnormality
- Calcified hardened tissue.
- Reactive lymph nodes
- Oral antibiotics quell my symptoms.
What Is This?
My facial pain is not chronic pain. I am certain that the pain that I am in, is not resulting from an injury. There is a cause to my pain, and an aetiology needs to be found. This can only be a soft tissue infection. If this is not an infection, then can someone please tell me what it is?
If anyone knows of a physician, who can help to identify a cause to my condition, please get in touch via my contact box, by email, or via twitter. Thank you.
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