Merchandise and Food Shortages in a National Crisis

[Ninurta]

@"Ninurta" 

If you take 800mg of ibuprophen and 1000 mg of Tylenol, it packs about the same pain relieving punch as a Vicodin, just without the "high".

I imagine that might get a little rough on the liver if carried on for a while.

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You are going to die from something. 

Pain is a weird thing, and is the one thing that is truly unique for each individual.

Pain is an alarm siren. It is your brain's way of alerting you something is wrong.

When you take a medication for pain, but do not resolve the issue causing the pain, the brain assumed you did not get the message and dials up the intensity of the pain.

That is why, people need stronger doses of pain medication over time. I have known 90 pound patients that were taking enough morphine to kill three elephants.

Another weird thing about pain is that it also works in the opposite direction. When you ignore the pain, over time, the brain will assume that you got the message, or will never get the message, so it stops using it's reserves to send the signal.

In both cases, if the issue causing the pain is not resolved, your body goes into a responsive loop, that will continue, until so much damage has been done that not much will be able to be done.

Pain medication is not a cure. It is a bandaid. It is sometimes worse for you than the disease, and even sometimes, more deadly.

I rarely ever take pain medicine. Ask Grace - she thinks getting me to take a pill of any kind is like trying to herd cats.

I tell her I NEED my pain - it's what lets me know I'm still alive, and it's there to tell me when something is wrong and needs to be addressed.

There is a reason for my pain when I have it, and I don't care to mask that reason out and ignore it. That just causes me to move in directions I otherwise would not, which allows the damage to increase rather than heal up.

Her pain is different. It's chronic and permanent, and the CRPD will never go away. As I understand it, it's a "phantom pain" caused by nerve damage and signalling a pain that is not really there except in her nerves. So she needs the medicine to block it just to function, and I need to stay away from the medicine, also to function.

You are correct in stating that it is unique to each individual. It takes all kinds.

When I was in my early 30's, I went to a dentist, and in order to drill a tooth, he shot me up with some kind of (experimental at that time) 'caine. Every time he tested for numbness, it wasn't there, so he'd shoot me up again. It took him about 3 doses to numb me, and he commented that I must have a "high pain threshold" since it took so much to numb me, and that has never made sense to me - if I had a high pain threshold, it seems to me that I'd feel less pain rather than the same, and especially with that 'caine running through me.

This is a strange, strange world.

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