Pain patients have a major issue with the gap between how they look and how they feel. Of all the frustrations that I have witnessed patients go through, being judged by their looks is the worst of all.
It is hard enough to fight the pain day and night, having sharp or burning pain which makes sleeping impossible and ruins all day functions. It is hard enough to keep sanity while facing insane pain which no one can cure. It drains all energy and does not leave anything left for explaining to others. It is simply TOO MUCH when we hear: Oh you seem to be OK, how can your pain be as bad as you claim? A diabetic patient does not have to go through life fighting to prove their disease. Why would a patient with chronic diabetic neuropathic pain need to put up this fight for life to be believed?
A patient needing heart surgery would never need to prove to others how their impaired heart circulation is impacting their life. Every body would sympathies with a heart patient needing surgery. Why would the same patient who develops post surgical neuropathic pain after heart surgery need to beg for being believed. I don’t think the society at large is aware of the level of damage they are causing every time they doubt the level of suffering of a chronic pain patient, just because of how well they look.
