Pain Clinic, waste of time

Perhaps the consultant would have had more freedom to offer innovative treatment ideas but the nurse is likely to be limited in what she could suggest. I think the way the NHS is struggling at the moment means that many patients aren’t being offered the care they need to live as healthy a life as possible.

I have been waiting nearly eight years for a surgical procedure that ‘may’ happen this year. Services are disjointed here and although the waiting list for adult autism assessments is many years long, the follow up care here is quite good for people with low support needs.

That’s tough. Maybe next time, if there is one, tell them you want to be in less/no pain. If they are anything like some health services here, they will tell you, “we can’t guarantee anything but we can offer X, Y or Z treatments, all of which have proven efficacy, which do you want?” 

Everyone else but the pain clinic are really nice, next time I see my GP I will tell them about this, although there's nothing else they can do, they just help support me with my alternative and less than legal alternatives.

I'm angry rather than dispairing, I think they've decided I'm to difficult and to ignore me.

Sorry didn’t see this.

I was taking a long time to continue my first reply as I am a bit distracted at the moment. 

I don’t know where you could go or what you could do to get relief from the pain. The only thing I can suggest is to return to your GP and tell them what you have said here. There is kindness on this forum and I am hoping at least one of your family members is sympathetic and kind. I get that you are at the end of your tether but don’t give up hope or let that experience put you off. 

No nothing, even the fybromyalgia group she told me about no longer meets on the island only in Llandudno, or a faceache group.

I don't think I had unrealistic expectations of what they could possibly do to help me nor do I think it fair for them to put the emphasis on the patient to tell them what they need, I don't know what treatments they have available to them, so how would I know what to ask for? It seems as if you don't ask then nothing will be offered, it's like a double ignorance problem where the patient is always in the wrong

It’s unfortunate that you had a clinician who was unsympathetic, especially when it is a given that people in chronic pain are less able to cope with life in general.

I have noticed these past few years that doctors, physiotherapists, psychotherapists and some nurses say, “What are your expectations/what do you hope to gain by coming here/what would you like the outcome to be?” I imagine they have been trained in this approach so that patients can state that they want to be pain free/sleep better/walk 10K/return to work/cut the grass etc., yet the way some professionals phrase the question can come across as uncaring and the addition of “this time” sounds as if the nurse couldn’t be bothered. 

I hope that you got the answers/help that you needed. 

Sorry got signed out.

But they dont' recomend injections at all now and dont' do them, they prescribe lifestyle changes instead along with the pain killers I can't take. I do all the things they suggest like taking exercise daily and getting out and about and not sitting around doing nothing.

It's all well and good them deciding not to do certain treatments anymore but I think they should have something to offer in it's place, they've always encouraged lifestyle changes, last time they said I could teach them things rather than the other way around. 

 I feel left high and dry with nowhere to go with the levels of pain I endure on a daily basis, let alone when I have a bad day and when I go to stand, my shin bones feel like they're going to pop my kneecaps off. They don't do anything for fybromyalgia, she suggested I go to a comunity group that helps with lifestyle choices for fybro, nothing for osteo arthritis, just grin and bear it.

If they have so little to offer is it any wonder that people try so many, often unregulated alternative treatments? Don't they understand that when you're in pain every day, thats uncontrolled, that people get desperate and that leaves them open to charletans and snake oil salesmen?

Sorry I'm ranting again, but I'm fed up, I've spent years dealing with pain, with little or no help, trying everything I can to stay out of a wheelchair, now when I'm at the end of my resourses, there's nothing, no help, not even kindness.