Mental Health and Chronic Pain… WTF
Mental illness and chronic pain are fraternal twins.
They go hand in hand. It’s a ‘chicken or the egg’ situation.
It’s two six year olds pointing at each other when a mother asks, “Who covered the wall in sharpie marker and marshmallow fluff?”
In my experience, one always exacerbates the other. It’s been nearly impossible for me to figure out if my physical conditions and potential diseases are the cause of my mental health symptoms worsening or the other way around. Maybe it’s both. Which is even more confusing.
I’m obviously not the only one who struggles with this reality. Millions of people in this country (and the world) deal with this. And to be fair, I’m very grateful for my overall health. It isn’t always horrible all year round. I don’t suffer with cancer or other fatal illnesses that are way, way worse than what I go through.
Back to the story I was supposed to start already. On January 3rd of this year (yesterday lol), my body decided to welcome the new year with a trip to the emergency room. I’ll spare you the details of my medical history, but things are definitely effed up in my body. It nearly always hurts. I have never-ending fatigue, and I have severe stomach issues. I woke up yesterday feeling so dizzy, numb, and weak that I could barely walk and thought I was going to faint. So my dad drove me to the ER. Fun!
There weren’t any normal ER rooms available when I arrived, so they had to put me in a psych ward room.
This may be an insensitive room description, but it really was creepy. It had nothing but a small window and a bed. They felt bad that I was in there, so they kept my door open and brought me a chair.
I know you’re probably thinking that they intentionally put me in there because… well I obviously have mental health conditions. I’ve already told you that. But no, yesterday I was not having a psychotic break.
I absolutely hate getting my blood drawn and having an IV in my arm (I don’t know where else you’d have an IV so that was unnecessary to say).
The nurse made fun of me because she saw my tattoos and said, “Get your shit together girl. Needles are needles.”
After nine hours of waiting in my creepy empty room, I was taken to get a CAT scan. Before I was taken to get this scan, I was informed that I needed to drink two cups of special liquid so they could get better imaging of my organs or whatever.
I immediately replied, “Oh, that cement crap right?”
The nurse stared at me like maybe I actually was meant to be in that psych room.
“It’s not cement.”
“No, I know it’s not actually cement, but I got a CAT scan when I was little and they made me drink the thickest, grayest goop of all time beforehand. It was god awful.”
Thankfully, I didn’t have to drink the same cementy goop from my past.
When I laid on the table thingy that moves inside the CAT scan machine, I was given a liquid through my IV. The tech told me that I was about to feel weird things. A minute later, my body was warm, and I swore I peed my pants. This is embarrassing, but it kinda felt good.
I kept thinking to myself, “This is normal Alex. Don’t say anything weird to yet another nurse.”
A CAT scan machine looks like something in the Hunger Games movies, so I had a pretty cool daydream when the whole pee-my-pants process was going on. After the CAT scan, I waited another three hours before a doctor came in to give me my results.
“Well your symptoms are not normal and are very concerning, and you appear to be malnourished. But we have to discharge you because you’re not in eminent danger.”
“Okay so what now if you’re telling me my symptoms aren’t normal.” Duh.
“You have to go to a GI specialist and get a colonoscopy,” he explained.
“Okay, thank you.” (I guess?)
Then I said goodbye to the hall staff that I was talking Harry Potter trivia with throughout the day and walked out of the ER. I wanted to cry. No answers. Per usual. What’s frustrating is that I went to a GI specialist months ago, and they only let me get an endoscopy. I knew in my gut (haha punny) that I needed a colonoscopy too. But what are you supposed to do? Lose your shit on your doctor and refuse to leave the office?
Like I mentioned before, the perpetual predicament between mental illness and chronic pain is universal.
Mental Health America indicates that, “Mental health conditions are often thought to be secondary to physical health conditions when both are present. This can result in under-treatment of the mental health condition.”
This is interesting to me because I deal with the opposite. I am so overly diagnosed and treated from a mental health perspective, but most of my physical ailments and symptoms remain untreated and mysterious.
The National Library of Medicine also stated the following:
“How does chronic pain affect your mental health?
The observations from functional imaging studies suggest that this bidirectional relationship is due in part to shared neural mechanisms. In addition to depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders, individuals with chronic pain are at risk of other mental health problems including suicide and cigarette smoking and many have sustained sexual violence.”
This checks out, but it doesn’t answer if my mental health is causing my physical pain or if diseases are or both.
Unfortunately, I don’t have tips or tricks here to “fix” chronic pain. I have a feeling that this will be a life-long process, as it is for so many people.
Finding the root cause of pain is like finding a cell phone that you dropped off a kayak into a lake.
Actually, that was a bad analogy because it’s definitely harder than that. If you have any clue about addressing the topic discussed in this blog post, please talk to me.
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