Challenging patient, part deux. My chat with PT Matt.
This is a follow up to my Challenging Patient post. It is a wonderful exchange I had with a physical therapist about the idea of patients being challenging.
Tag Archives: ongoing pain
Why Patient Stories Matter at Professional Conferences
This has been a year of presenting or participating in meaningful ways in conferences, and I’m so grateful for the opportunities to share what it is like to live with pain, and to recover, out into the professional conference world. The most recent was the Reforming MSK Practice conference from Jack Chew and ReformPhysio, where I was a keynote speaker →
Pain education – educating patients or making sense of pain together?
In my last post I shared some thoughts on pain education and the phrase ‘pain is an output of the brain‘. I compared pain as output to pain as a lived, conscious, complex experience that people feel. From my perspective, describing pain as an output robs the experience of pain’s harsh, all-encompassing, life-changing reality. We are not machines producing outputs. →
Pain – output of the brain or lived conscious experience?
This is something I have been thinking about for quite sometime and recent conversations pushed me to finish this post. I’m not a fan of saying pain is an output of the brain, and I’ll lay out why (please hear me out). I do anticipate some pushback, based on previous chats. Because of that, I want to make it clear →
Where I’m coming from when I talk about pain…
So where the heck am I coming from? Part of why I write this blog is to bridge the gap between the science of pain and the experience of pain and between clinicians’ and patients’ understanding of pain. I’m at an interesting intersection in the pain world. I have lived with pain, so view pain science through that lens. I try →
Stress, allostatic load, homeostasis, attention and pain
On a 4-mile run the other the day I ran my fastest first 2 miles in over 7 1/2 years. My fastest first mile, too. And I did it on asphalt and concrete in heavy sneakers I didn’t buy with the intention of running in. Factors that would have made me avoid running in the first place just 6 months →
Relax! Running, pain and my CFT experience
In the last week I’ve gone on 2 runs. This is a big deal for me! I love running. Running has been one of the things I’ve missed most these last 7 years. I’ve given it a go a few times, and was quite successful last summer (read about it here!), but I started experiencing new pain in my left hip →
Cognitive Functional Therapy with Peter O’Sullivan
I recently attended the third annual San Diego Pain Summit (I’ve been to all three!) and was fortunate to be the patient demo for Peter O’Sullivan‘s Cognitive Functional Therapy workshop. (for a review of the whole workshop, check out Diane Jacob’s post.) Funny thing was, heading into it I thought I was going to be the wrong kind of patient →
Trying to get better while having to prove we’re in pain
How do we get better if we have to constantly prove we’re in pain? And does that constant need to prove we’re in pain prevent us from getting better? In recent posts I wrote about the shame I felt after developing chronic pain and how I’ve been working through that shame. They were the hardest posts I’ve ever written, my most vulnerable by far. And →
Unashamed and unafraid: living well with pain
My last post, on shame, resentment, hurt and pain, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever published on this blog. It’s scary to let our truths out, to expose our cracks to the world. But it’s also been my most resonant post, by far, based on the reactions and the →
DermoNeuroModulating course review
I attended Rey Allen’s course on DermoNeuroModulating (DNM) in Boulder, Colorado last month and have been processing all that I learned and experienced there, with much more processing to do. But while it’s still fresh I want to share some of my initial thoughts and impressions. I’ll start with that I highly recommend the course. It was thought-provoking, engaging, interactive, →
Shame, resentment, hurt, and pain
At my first ever Writer’s Camp this summer we were given a writing prompt about shame. Shame is a tough thing to write about. It’s something I’ve wanted to write about for quite a while, but I’ve been ashamed to. It’s hard to be that vulnerable, that bare. It’s hard to let the world see into those deep dark places. →
Goals. Whose goals are they, ours or theirs?
I went for a walk today and took pictures, a favorite pastime of mine and one I’m very grateful for. As I was perched on two rocks, squatting to gain a better perspective for a photo, I started thinking about a few things, namely goals and motivation. For a long time I couldn’t squat, at least not with any comfort. →
Why do I have pain? Searching for meaning beyond a diagnosis
The question of why people living with pain seek a reason for why they have pain recently came up in a Facebook group I’m in. It’s a good question, one I used to struggle with myself. Not the why of what’s causing my pain (that’s really more ‘how’ question, isn’t it?) but rather why do I have pain at all? The why →
Connection, disconnection, and chronic pain
Many of my recent conversations, with both practitioners and patients, have come around to the idea and importance of connection. Connection with others, connection with the world, connection with ourselves. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that there have also been a glut articles of late about the importance of social connections in everything from all-cause mortality to addiction to physiotherapy. But →