In the United States, 50 million individuals live with chronic pain—about 1 in 6 people. This metric, while staggering enough, only includes adults.
Visiting the doctor—for the first time or for yet another follow-up—can be overwhelming.
When a 36-year-old Latino man walks into a clinician’s office seeking help for pain, chances are good he will be asked about his pain level on a 1-10 scale.
Medical appointments that are not affirming of patients’ gender, name, and pronouns can be traumatic for individuals who are transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse.
There are many reasons that men may avoid going to the doctor. Whether it’s pride or machismo, finances, culture, or just wanting to avoid hearing “turn your head and cough,” men often put off these exams for too long.
The tie between physical pain and mental illness can feel like a never-ending and inseparable cycle, with pain causing or worsening mental health symptoms, and mental health issues provoking or exacerbating pain.
Ethleen Peacock was born in Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa, with sickle cell disease—a disorder in which red blood cells are misshapen and have difficulty moving through the body, causing intense pain episodes called “crises.”
One of the most significant stressors experienced by those living with debilitating chronic pain is how to pay for the treatment and health care they need—and those concerns are multiplied for individuals unable to work any longer because of their pain.
For as long as she can remember, Claudia King has experienced pain with urination as well as pain during and after sex. She thought it was normal. She was diagnosed with severe endometriosis at 17, but later, when a urinary tract infection wouldn’t clear up, a doctor wrote her off as having a sexually transmitted disease.
For the more than 50 million Americans who live with chronic pain, over-the-counter (OTC) pain relievers may be right up there with “phone, wallet, keys” on the checklist of items to keep with them at all times.
By Mariah Leach
