[throwaway34241]

People talking positively about pain (and especially immediate post-surgical pain as in the article) makes me uneasy. Sure, some level of pain is useful as a warning sign. And wanting painkillers primarily to avoid resting is unreasonable.

But, if there is too much pain, it will cause extreme stress during the day and they will probably be unable to sleep at night - it is hard to imagine this being beneficial for recovery.

Also, if the pain is too great, people will avoid future treatment, even if it is medically advisable.

I think there have been problems with anesthesia in the past, where people woke up during surgery (although still unable to move), and I think it led to negative outcomes even though it is only pain - although I admit, I am reluctant to look up the details.

At the very least, I think it is good to give enough pain medication so that the patient does not want to die, although I understand it may be unavoidable when the level / duration is high enough.

It looks like in the article, the level of pain and recovery for this procedure is not very bad (probably because it's laparoscopic), and the doctors know this, so their recommendations were appropriate and the patient was worried over nothing. But, I don't think this means that the same is true for all procedures, and suggesting that people just make peace with it or whatever without knowing what the level is seems wrong. Especially in the case of surgical recovery where the first day or two is usually the worst, and the risks of medication over such a short period are low.

I wouldn't wish for a more serious level of pain on my worst enemy. I do not think it is useful or possible to make peace with, unless you are Buddha himself.

[eropple]

> I don't think this means that the same is true for all procedures, and suggesting that people just make peace with it or whatever without knowing what the level is seems wrong

It's like I literally expressed that? Maybe I made it trickier to parse by referring primarily to chronic pain--if you want to lump extreme, trauma-induced pain into that? Sure. When lives are on the line, whatever, do what needs to be done; we have doctors to make educated decisions based on the information available.

But I will contend most Americans--and my observations are largely limited to us--mostly harm themselves in the effort to avoid what we have largely decided is pain and is in many ways merely discomfort. And I tend to think that that ramps up into greater problems along the way.

[throwaway34241]

I see that makes more sense now, I think that line did throw me off somehow.

I haven't seen any close friends or family just pop a Tylenol for every day aches and pains, but it certainly seems to be a thing, so I'm open to the idea that I'm living in some kind of bubble in that regard. I've always thought of pain medication as for bringing severe pain down to a lower (but non-zero) level, so for example it might not be taken at all if you break a toe, but would be more than reasonable for the jaw surgery in the first post in the thread.

It's interesting, chronic back pain is one of the most common chronic pain causes, and a doctor was talking to me recently about it (in general, luckily I don't have it). Apparently once it gets started it can have its own self reinforcing process, and there are measurable biological changes to how nerves fire etc. that are independent of any initial underlying injury. Probably there's some people faking or overstating it, but I could easily imagine such a process getting pretty severe. Unfortunately, the outlook is pretty bad I think once you've had it for a set amount of time.

So concerning chronic pain / opioid use I can't figure out if Americans are less willing to deal with pain, or actually have more pain, or some combination of both. If back pain just needs an initial injury to set it off, then escalates from there, the unhealthy lifestyles and ever increasing obesity levels here would do a lot to explain why it is becoming an increasing problem.