I’m 65 and have had chronic chronic pain since getting injured in the Navy when I was 19. To give you an idea of how much it involves, my service connected disability total is 180% because it has evolved into Sever Systemic Disease. I mistakenly didn’t question being on 480 tp 500 mg of morphine a day for many years. I was careful not to take it to get high but I wasn’t able to just grin and bear it because my heart is part of that disability, 100% for that and 80% for skeletal issues. I went through a 10 day detox in the hospital in February of last year after a colonoscopy and endoscopy didn’t show a cause for the pain so I was diagnosed with Narcotic Bowel Syndrome and a detox was supposed to be the only treatment. The constant abdominal began after emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder and the endless complications afterwards. Now that pain controls my life. There were times when the ortho pain was so bad that I could only walk a few steps using a walker because if I pushed it my defibrillator would knock me on my butt because of the SVT that it caused. But even with all of that going on I was able to volunteer at the VA for years and could take care of myself. The chronic GI pain doesn’t allow me to think clear enough to do much of anything. There’s a reason for the term “Its Like. Getting Hit In The Gut”, having pain there doesn’t allow you to concentrate on anything else but how to make it stop. It fills you with anger and limits your ability to cope with anything that is going on around you, including the other chronic pain. My GI Dr at UTSW here in Dallas is referring me to the Mayo Clinic after not finding anything that would explain the pain after an EUS and ERCP two weeks ago. I’m sure that it’s only the GI patients that truly understands the difference in having really bad GI pain and what it does to their lives. I’d sell my soul to make it stop so I’m hoping that the Mayo Clinic’s Dr’s won’t make me have to.

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