In May, I had an inflamed thumb.
Well, inflamed doesn’t quite do it justice. It was three times the normal size, and I would see stars if I lowered it below my shoulder.
Went to Urgent Care, and the first thing they offered was Vicodin. I didn’t like the pain, but I wanted my fraking thumb to stop being swollen. The nurses and doc all saw my vitals, noted that my blood pressure was spiking much higher than my normal readings, and kept offering Vico till an old nurse walked in. She looked at my swollen thumb, at my chart, and told the doc that “He won’t take pain meds, solve the problem”. I ended up with a steroid, ice, and a Tylenol III (which they said it was for swelling).
If I hadn’t pushed it, I would have walked out with Vicodin and no idea of what was going on. Turned out I had pinched something in my palm, and it was causing massive irritation. I needed some therapy after the swelling went down, which wouldn’t have happened if I had just taken the pill and went home. The therapy sucked, but broke up some cartilage built up that would have caused another flare up.
So I had some pain for a few days, but it hasn’t reoccurred. But if I had taken their original push, I might be fighting the same thing today with a higher dose of pain meds.
That is an example of what is going on. The pressure to get me in and out as enough that dosing up old Red was viewed as the best choice. But I don’t want drugs, I want it fixed.
Yep, doctors are so used to people demanding instant results against the symptoms without worrying about the problem they don’t even try to fix problems anymore. Especially if the fix might involve PT, nobody follows through on their PT so why prescribe it. And yep without entrenching like you did you’d probably be a chronic pain junkie.