The mind is pretty wily, and has infinite ways of creating physical distractions from things people don't want to face; of course people do have physical reasons for pain, but it's interesting to me that fibromyalgia is everywhere now, with hard-core advertising of drugs being used off-label to treat it.  Watching those infernal "Lyrica" commercials, I am always struck by the bright-eyed, coherent women singing its praises - when my husband was prescribed it for trigeminal neuralgia, he could barely function.  And he was prescibed enough of it to fill a candy jar.

I have suffered from chronic pain, and still do, for more than 30 years.  Pain so extreme, in my feet for one example, that it causes me to lose my breath and shudder, and feels like the next step I take will cause the arch in my foot to rip in half.  

I have a partially paralyzed lower right leg, the result of a genuine physical injury, from an L5/S1 disc that blew to bits and took my foot with it.

I began suffering from chronic pain after being abused as a child.  Pain so intense there were days when I was nine or ten that all I could do was curl up in a tight ball and jam myself into the corner of my bed for a few days.  

You can choose to believe this is where I come from or not, but I understand how the pain I, and millions of other feel, is real.  Why you would think, after the many posts and links I've made on this topic, that I am an "oh it's just all in your head" person, I have no idea.  But it saddens me that I have failed to properly communicate, which I must have done.

I have taken pain meds, and believe, AS I SAID, that obviously some people need them.  There are legitimate injuries and physical conditions that require them.

My ENTIRE POINT is that I disagree, in many cases, with the diagnosis of the ORIGIN of the pain.  Fibromyalgia, in my very studied opinion on this matter, as a person who suffered from enough conditions on the checklist to qualify as a fibromyalgia patient, is largely a mindbody disorder.  That is, and here is where I have trouble communicating I guess, the brain, specifically the subconscious brain, that part of the brain that factually controls our vital physical systems and also stores all that sh*t we have to repress, CAN (not does in every single case of people with pain) induce physical symptoms for psychological reasons.  

Modern medicine still, though it is improving, denies the ability of the brain to create physical symptoms for psychological reasons.  And that is abusrd.  I have touted the good Dr. John Sarno before, read up on him and mindbody/psychosomatic medicine in general if you so choose.  I am not some loon, this is a very old practice that was used to great effect with, for example, WWI vets suffering from undiagnosable conditions.  It disappeared when the pharmaceutical industry started creating a pill for everything, or so they claimed.  It has been kept alive by people like Dr. Sarno for years, much like the nurse who, basically in the basement, kept alive the Ketogenic diet as a treatment for epilepsy in children.

The Divided Mind by Dr. John Sarno, MD, NYU Medical Center (LINK)

Freud was on to this a hundred years ago.  The brain can make amputees think they have a limb that has been missing for years.  The brain can create genuine physical pain.  That's it.  And it is real pain, I have felt it, I still do.  I can't make my leg come back, but I can control things like the horrible foot pain (plantar fasciitis it's technically called), I can make it go away.  All the excruciating back pain and leg pain I had after back surgery, pain that no doctor could really connect to any specific physical injury my riddled body had, all that kind of pain went away.  After I understood the real origin of it.  Not that weird.  The brain is a complex organ.

Of course there are people, like me even, who had terrible physical injuries that can require medication.  But it can also be true that those same people, like me, and others not like them or me, can have chronic pain whose origin is not a physical injury at the spot of the pain, but mental, emotional in nature.  Unless you don't think the brain can create real physical pain in a spot on the body.  And if you don't, ignore me and good luck to you.

I'm also in that over-50 demographic that will have issues getting re-employed, so I have to make my own options and new choices concerning expatriation.

If the media is so concerned about the health of newborns why aren't they writing shocking headline grabbing stories about the effects of poor pre-natal care, often the result of a lack of affordable health care for the mother,  on babies? Why don't we see coverage that details the costs paid by babies and small children who are under-and-mal nourished because their parents cannot afford healthy nutritious food. A nice sidebar for that story would highlight Congress' decision to cut monies for infant and pregnant women nutrition programs so that the rich can enjoy tax cuts.

on another note, that sucks that you got notice. I do have faith in your skills, intellect and resilience. I hope if y'all high tail it south, you might accept me. I'd grow/cook for second language skills and a place to lay my head  :)

In any event, for my Anti-Ryan Budget the link is:
http://www.mjbarkl.com/usbudget.pdf

Join the Congressman Paul Ryan Budget Challenge:  Bring us your budgets!