Chronic Pain, Dismissal and the Path to Recovery with Virginia McIntyre

Absolutely.

I think it's interesting because one of the things that really stands out to me is so many of the people that I work with, they have this period in the wilderness where they're telling their story to clinicians, and clinicians are saying, "Nope, it's not what's happening." And a lot of the time they won't say, "You are making this up," but they will say something which makes you feel a huge amount of self-doubt secondary to that dismissal, and one of the things that I find really interesting is how many people have to go through that, why people don't take what the person suffering from pain says at face value and just say, "Well, actually, maybe there is something more complex going on here, and maybe we need to get you to someone who's more specialized." And there have been attempts in Scotland, where I am, to remedy this with policy which improves access at an earlier point.

But I'm not massively convinced that that has had a huge impact on people's journeys.

I work with people all the time who have had years and years of going through that roundabout of going to someone for help, not getting the help, being given messages which make them feel worse, and it was a really rubbish couple of years, but somebody noticed that fairly early on, and I wondered what about your situation helped that- ... conversation to happen that meant that you ended up in the right specialist area.

So I wouldn't say someone knows early on.

It was about two years into the journey before someone did.

Yeah, of course.

But what had happened was the surgeon, I'm going back and now seeing this ortho surgeon every six weeks.

"This physio is not working.

That's not working well." He said, "Try this.

Come back." He was very kind, but he would say, "The surgery went well.

I can send you for a second opinion." Okay.

[laughs] So I'm off waiting for another surgeon to see me, and that's where it was, and now it was going this hour and a half drive, we r- live in a rural community, to see this other surgeon.

And after waiting in his office for about two to three hours wait to see him, he's the one who said, "I have the thing for you.

Go see this pain clinic, and they'll do injections in your back, and the pain will be all gone." So even though the message was a little not correct, 'cause the pain's not gonna go, he did send me down a path to the pain clinic.

So yes, it was kudos.

He did do that, and that really was the turning point, was him actually acknowledging that maybe there is something more going on.

There's this interesting thing that happens to so many people who have experienced similar journeys to the one that you have, is that if they've had surgery, then the surgeon says, "Well, the surgery's a success, so this is essentially a you problem." [laughs] And people feel so lost in that when that happens.

And the surgery could have been a success, but we're taking too narrow a view of what health and suffering is when we say, "Well, actually, nobody can see a problem with the surgery, and so your pain is not any of my business anymore.

I'm washing my hands of your situation." And it just feels like it, again, comes down to if people are took at face value.

I can't speak for Canada at all, although I imagine that it's similar, is there's this distrust in people who, uh, report ongoing pain even when they've had what is deemed to be a successful intervention, and it doesn't really make sense.

And you have contextualized that both in our previous conversations, and you briefly touched on it before, when you have to appease and perform a specific way of being in pain or to keep the insurance company onside.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Being under an insurance company, and how many times I was asked, "Do you like your job? Do you want to go back to work?" They're pretty well accusing you of not wanting to go back to work.