[Augie]

There is a review of a book called "The Body Broken" in the March 25 edition of the Wall Street Journal. The book is about a woman's long battle with chronic pain and how such pain stresses "the body as well as the soul." The woman finally comes to terms with her pain and the review ends by quoting lines from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay: "And must I then, indeed, Pain,live with you/All through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,/Sharing-oh, worst of things!-the same head?-/And,when I feed myself, feeding you too?/So be it then, if what seems true is true:/Let us to dinner, comrade, and be fed."

You can access the review by googling "When Pain Comes to Stay." The author is Lynne Greenberg.

[jconner]

I want to read that . Thank you. My life of pain came to stay around age 33, after knowing I have RA since my teens, a doctor back then once told me that in my 30's i would begin to have 'problems". I didnt beleive him then, but i do now, Im 45 next week and have lived the WORSE DECADE of my life

[finz]

I just got this book.

I'm actually having a difficult time "getting into it." It is bringing up a lot of angry feelings for me because the author had such a different course in developing her pain issues. I find myself getting mad that her doctors listened to her......ordering tests and pain meds from the beginning where I was met with skepticism and being told it was "all in my head"

I thought I had moved on from the anger at the docs that I first saw now that I have a better team that is trying to help me, but reading this has made the beginning of my struggle with pain feel very fresh and raw

[Alffe]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802355924342085.html

[lovetosing]

Finz- I feel exactly how you do, I have Trigeminal Neuralgia and it took several years to be properly diagnosed and I had to go through the dr. looking at me like I was either mentally ill or lying to get drugs. I got to the point where I hated dr.s. I still feel that way most of the time, I think it is a real soul killer to be treated like that and it is hard to get over. I will never forget the helplessness and hopelessness I felt right before I was finally diagnosed.Right now I have been having a pretty severe bout of break-through pain that my neuro won't treat he told me to go to a PM Specialist, so I thought ok, well I had no idea how hard it would be to find one who would even see me. So I am at square one.