By Graham Lawton: For Complete Post, Click Here…
This new kind of pain is poorly understood, as there is often no sign of injury, but as Graham Lawton explains in this personal account, we are finally starting to make inroads.
WE FIRST knew something strange was going on when Clare, my wife, was given intravenous morphine in the emergency room. She had excruciating pain in her ribcage and back, which had started months earlier and was getting worse. At its peak, she described it as feeling like somebody had thrust two swords between her ribs and was prising them apart.
Morphine gave no relief. The doctors were baffled. Clare spent five days undergoing tests. She was eventually discharged with a diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome and a bag of powerful antidepressants, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds.
She didn’t have complex regional pain syndrome. I looked it up and the pain was in the wrong place. But it took another six weeks to find out what she did have, during which time her physical and mental health declined alarmingly. I eventually secured a consultation with the complex pain team at University College Hospital in London, who told us she had nociplastic pain. It was a non-deteriorating condition, we learned, and it was manageable.
