Ngā mihi nui, thank you very much, to family, friends, and colleagues who have read and responded to this piece over the last three years. Ngā mihi nui to the students of SCIS 314 whose feedback and encouragement have resulted in this piece being a Pinch(es) of Pain in this form. The Oxford English Dictionary …
Continue reading “You hurt too much”: pain, suffering, and stigma
I’m nestled into our couch cushions decompressing from the day, with YouTube videos streaming to the TV. Feet up, under a snuggly blanket. My husband and I have our regular evening watches: Daily Dose of Internet, Ozzy Man, any new Seth Meyers or Stephen Colbert clips. I select a Seth clip to watch, and an …
My eyelids are slow. I am dragging them open but they are heavy and fall closed. Now I can hold them open and I’m on my back staring at a bright ceiling. It is fuzzy. I don’t have my glasses. I must have made a noise because someone has come with my glasses at the …
Wow, I haven't posted a pinch for nearly a year! I was open with you, my lovely readers, and myself that pinches would sometimes be irregular. Things happened last year that meant pinches had to take a backseat. One of those things was that I took a creative non-fiction writing course as part of my …
A curious feature of chronic pain conditions is that people tend to have more than one. The term "chronic overlapping pain conditions" (COPCs) describes the co-occurrence of more than one of ten named conditions (1). Imagine a Venn-diagram type overlap of the symptoms of each condition. Photo by Paulina Milde-Jachowska on Unsplash The ten named …
Come along on a thought experiment with me please. Pause a moment and think of Aotearoa New Zealanders, who are we? Note down your description. I'm currently reading Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould. I've read part one (of four parts) so my understanding of the premise …
I had my second Covid-19 vaccine yesterday (Pfizer). I am nervous each time I get a vaccination. It is a perfectly common experience to be nervous before a vaccination for a variety of reasons. I feel nervous because I worry about a flare-up of my chronic pain. This concern comes from the fact that a …
Continue reading I was nervous to get the Covid-19 vaccinations
Earlier in the year I was interviewed by a student, Emily McCarthy, writing a creative non-fiction piece on pain management. Emily interviewed me about my lived experience of managing pain as well as research I have contributed to. Emily also interviewed Toby Hall a clinician with extensive experience helping people to manage their pain. I'm …
In late 2020, I participated in a New Zealand Pain Society (NZPS) webinar on why it is crucial to consider lived experience in pain management: "Pain education webinar on "Nothing about us without us" - A coalition of lived experience experts in Aotearoa New Zealand." The NZPS has very kindly made this webinar available for …
The trickiness of chronic pain is its chronic-ness. It's ongoing, unending. Auto-correct suggested chronic mess for chronic-ness, that seems sadly apt for how I feel and sometimes how I feel I am seen. Researchers use the words chronic and persistent to describe pain, fatigue, nausea, itch, ulcers, wounds, stress, sadness, fear... The whole Pandora's box …
Pinches of Pain 