On chronic pain

I was laying in bed next to my wife and dog. It was just a lazy Sunday afternoon. It was a rainy day. Dog was asleep in between us. She's was only about eighteen pounds. She was a pretty small dog. Somebody slammed a car door outside. She, jumped up, and the best I can describe it is she sort of spring boarded off my left testicle. And it sort of felt like somebody had hit me in the nuts and, it just never went away. Sort of felt like I was in a vice and then a couple of times a minute, it kind of felt like I was getting hit by lightning. It would be so sharp that I couldn't breathe. Oh my god. A couple times a minute, you said? Yes. And this was going on for years. Yes. This is Paul. He lives in Connecticut and has had chronic pain for about fifteen years. Oh my god. So, I mean, I've had I've been kicked in the nuts before, and I know what that feels like. Yeah. So it was definitely that that first day that she had jumped on me. Unfortunately, we were leaving for vacation that following day. So I was in South America for two weeks, and then got back and saw a doctor. But there really wasn't much of anything anybody could do. I assume you went to you you began kind of a medical treatments and seeing doctors and stuff like that. Oh, I actually have a list written down here. Oh, I'd I'd love to hear it. I've had three spinal cord stimulators. Basically, they implant a battery under your skin, and they run leads into your spine. And the idea is it kind of overwhelms the nerve with a signal, that should kind of block the pain. Unfortunately, it didn't didn't work for me. I've had two different surgeries to sever that nerve. I've had a nerve ablation that hurts so bad I actually almost passed out on the table. I've had physical therapy, pelvic floor physical therapy, talk therapy, pain reprocessing therapy. Everybody always recommends yoga. Yes. I've tried that. Medication wise, I've tried antidepressants, anticonvulsants, gabapentin, pregabalin, opioids, muscle relaxers, THC, CBD, about a a thousand snake oils. I've got drawers full of of pills. Basically, if anybody said that some supplement helped them, I tried it. Really, the only things that have worked, opioids kind of take the edge off. THC kind of distracts me from the pain. I haven't said no to a medication or a treatment because, as you can imagine, it's it's pretty desperate for a solution. As you can hear, Paul has struggled for years with chronic pain, pain that just doesn't go away. In his case, he knows exactly when it started and how it started. This sad story about his dog. For many people with chronic pain, though, how or when it started is more ambiguous, but no less real. …