also in starving i suppose, but i need my hands to work until i finish college. without vioxx or the like, i cant open my hands for an hour after i wake up and they finally stop hurting around 3 in the afternoon at which time they are too weak to pick up anything heavy and lack much dexterity, i am not looking for a "quick fix" if i was i would just take the narcotics my doc has given me for those really bad days. i just want a normal resemblance of life.
There is something about living with chronic pain that until the other has done it, they just can't understand really.
I have a stupid GI system. I make gall stones, even without a gall bladder. Hiatal hernia. IBS, too! I have a stomach that's a bit naturally hyper acidy, and it got the heck burned out of it a couple of years ago by high dosage naproxen -I developed plantar fasctitis and had arthritis in my hand, and this is what they used to treat it. I was inflamed from my esophagus through the duodenum. I solved my foot problem by switching to Danner boots. Couldn't even take Vioxx or Celebrex, and the arthritis screamed! Prevacid did make it better, and after awhile the dr. put me on Celebrex for my achies.
But then I developed more tummy problems. Had stones in my common bile duct, which kicked off pancreatitis. Before they finally operated on the stones, it was like walking around with a heart attack for almost 3 months. Narcotics make it worse - antispasmodics help (there's a little sphincter there which tends to spasm around narcotics).
Pain sucks. I still get some of the stomach symptoms. The hands hurt when cold fronts come in and I am really looking forward to winter being over already!
Pain grinds you down, causes depression, interfers with what you want to do, and takes the joy of life away.
Taking the edge off of pain makes the difference sometimes between a decent day and a day in darkness.
It's important to make the right decisions, and have something like a decent life. It's easy for people to have minimal problems to say, go take aspirin, but it's not possible for some of us.
And to have weird, junk science news stories to judge by surely doesn't make the deciding easier.