I am sorry if my post led to a feeling like I had chronic pain. I really don’t other than normal aches and pains of aging. But I had a bad tooth extraction lately and there was a lot of pain over a two week period with dry socket. This led me to spend time thinking about the pain scale and how discussing my pain with doctors in the past has worked out, which in turn led me to think about other people I have advocated for and how those conversations went for them. Including my husband with multiple myeloma. How he uses the pain scale and how good his oncologist is about controlling his pain. Locally we have an epidemic of opiate addiction (like everywhere), it is very difficult for good doctors to discern what people need, and even worse when the patient struggles to describe it. This was just the wanderings of an idle mind.