Referred Pain

[laceblade]

Sometimes, pain happens in your body but it manifests somewhere else.

Post-surgery, almost every time I eat, I get immediate stabbing pain in my left shoulder. This probably would have been creepier if one of my GERD symptoms from the last 18 months hadn't been stabbing chest pain (center of chest).

My mom kept mentioning that "referred pain" is a thing, but I didn't feel better about it until I googled it.

And, true facts, pain in a person's diaphragm can show up in someone's left shoulder, because the two areas share a nerve or something. (Science/medicine is not my area, even though it's kind of my profession.)



"Referred pain" seems like it could be a great metaphor when applied to other things in life, but I'm too tired to write anything grandiose about it just now.

Comments

[sasha_feather]

I hope your acupuncturist can help you with this-- Eastern medicine is GREAT with this kind of thing!

[laceblade]

That's a good point, I'll bring it up when I see her Monday. I'll see her before I see the surgeon again.

And I'm assuming the surgeon will be useless anyway, since he told me a) acidic foods would be totes fine during this recovery period (not true), b) that I could try solid foods again whenever I feel like it (not true according to his residents/pharmacist/my discharge orders, and c) that I shouldn't need to take my prilosec/etc. stuff (untrue according to his pharmacist/other peeps). Like, there is reality and then there is the place where my surgeon lives, I guess.

Acupuncturist gets me, though, at least usually. (Except for the one time when she told me all my problems relate to stress and I could solve this by marrying rich, :p)

[sasha_feather]

Marrying rich! Hahah that's sweet. :D

[jesse_the_k]

Hey, it could solve 78% problems!

(And sasha that icon is SO you!)

[hederahelix]

I had some soft tissue damage along my left collarbone that referred to my back and the back of my neck (or the other way round--soft tissue to my back/neck that was referring to a spot along my collarbone--I can't remember now which direction it went.) I still don't understand the mechanics of it, but I am 100% convinced that it happens. (I had a back/neck injury at the time, and I was fortunate enough to have a massage therapist associated with my primary care doc's practice. The massage therapy worked wonders, and she was actually able to mash on the appropriate spot to cause pain in the other spot.

Erm, that sounds slightly more sadistic than I mean the description to. A lot of massage therapy is working on the scar tissue in the spot that's in pain, so a lot of time is spent with the massage therapist therapeutically mashing on things and you telling the therapist where your pain level is at the time.

Anyway, when I was describing where I was in pain, at one point she mashed on something and I felt the pain exactly where it had been before, but she was not mashing the place that hurt. She was mashing on the place the pain was referring from.

It was totally weird to me at the time, but after experiencing it over and over and her mashing on a different spot than the one that hurt each time, I stopped trying to understand it and figured that I didn't need to understand it to accept that it was true.

The human body is kind of amazing in the things it does.

[lileyo]

Ooo, I love the idea of that metaphor. I can definitely see where it could be taken.

[solidarity fistjab, because you are a BAMF]

[jesse_the_k]

I've had referred pain so many places it's ridic. There's a really talented hands-on healer I see who demonstrates these odd connections all the time. Pain is shooting across my bicep but it's actually starting in my shoulder blade. She holds the shoulder blade in a particular way and the bicep pain disappears! She's the only person who's given me exercises to do in bed when I was just beginning to recover from surgery.