So What IS IT With Doctors?

Got my cowgirl boots on today cuz I wanna KICK some ass! Had my brain scan, everything's good, no hidden tumors, like the doctor expected - - but, hey, doc, I still got this chronic pain thing goin' on....it's been four or five years so far and nothin's gettin' any better......and YOU'RE a neurologist, ain't that right?

N: "Yes, that's right."
ME: "So you happen to know a great deal about NERVES, right?"
N: "I do."
ME: "So I've told you the history of my severe pain, I've told you the history of the Big-Dog medication they've tried me on and how it doesn't work........"
N: "Yes, but those were PAIN pills, and you don't NEED pain pills. They won't work, not really."
ME: "So what WILL work?"
N: "It's very likely that an anti-inflammatory will work."
ME: "Yeah? So will you prescribe one for me?"
N: "No, your regular doctor should be prescribing those."
ME: "Why? You're a neurologist! You KNOW more than he does about these things!"
N: "Yes, but I don't PRESCRIBE anti-inflammatorys."
ME: "Look, I've been to my regular doctor several times, I've been to Dr. Green, I've been to Virginia Mason, I've been to the University of Washington......and nobody but you has mentioned anti-inflammatorys. So I'm pretty interested. So why can't you make an exception? I am sitting here right now, in great PAIN."
N: (Looking straight at me) "I know that, but I just don't prescribe that kind of medicine. Go confer with your regular doc."

So there you have it. In this country, men are more likely to be prescribed whatever they want, while women, 82% of whom are more likely than men to be given an antidepressant for pain instead of pain medication or other meds specific to their condition) - are less aggressive about getting what they want - or are dismissed as merely being hysterical.

Chronic pain is a toughie. Part of the curse ofchronic pain is that it sounds untrue to people who don't have pain. Patients grope at metaphors that seem melodramatic, both far-fetched and cliched. Author Elaine Scarry characterizes chronic pain as not only NOT a linguistic experience, but as a language-destroying-experience. Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in party through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language," she writes."

Anyway. Brain good, pain bad. Boots pretty, but actually made for walking, not kicking. "Some days," says Anne Lamott, "the most we can hope for is to end up just a little less crazy than before. A little less lonely. A little less impatient."

When I left the neurologist's office, we were both rubbing our own foreheads, wearily, almost furtively, as if we had both been in the ring together and no winner had been announced.