3 (more) Painful Life Lessons I Learned as a Guinea Pig in a Lab

It hurt. It hurt a lot. I knew there was only one thing I could do, I needed to stop.

I pressed “Stop” and the machine began winding down.

The next day I was in the doctor’s office.

“How long has this persisted?” the doctor asked.

“About 4 months,” I replied.

The diagnosis: sharp pain on the right side of my knee triggered by running or walking more than 2 miles.

The solution: rest for 2 months.

2 months later I was in the doctor’s office again.

“Have you tried taking ibuprofen?” he asked.

“This guy is an idiot,” I thought.

Whether we like to admit it or not, doctors don’t always have our best interests at heart.

They see dozens of patients per day and, at the end of the day, they’re mostly looking to solve a problem in the quickest amount of time with the least amount of effort.

They are human, after all.

I knew that if I went through the doctor’s process, eventually I would be referred to a specialist. But it would probably take months before we got to that point.