a friend of mine who suffers from cluster headaches (also referred to as “suicide headaches” because of their severity) went through absolute hell for about 6 months when she moved from canada to the states. in canada, she had found what worked for her but when she moved to the states, she found what you described. after 6 months of hard work and unimaginable suffering, she found her rhythm again.

what DOES seem to help sometimes is to bring certain types of documentation with you. i know someone with RSD who, last time i talked to, seemed to have that reasonably well figured out. let me know if you’d like to to get in touch with her. she is also a blogger and blogs about her experience with RSD but anyone reading her blog needs to have an introduction.

I have noticed when I have attacks in other cities the new doctors that don’t know me are very cautious and almost non-believing in prescribing I.V. morphine and have never provided me with a morphine pill prescription. My opinion is that they do not trust a non-regular patient’s explanation of the chronic pain as true. I am referred to go back to my G.P. and have the prescription refilled by him. Which I have no other choice to do.

While traveling (especially by air into the USA), I have been questioned about bringing morphine into the country. This is a time consuming interogation that only stops once I pull out a special letter/prescription explanation of my chronic pain condition.

My future concern (within the next five years), is that my doctor is going to retire and I will not have such a long history with the next doctor. New doctors that I have tried to become a patient with are hesitant to be involved with a patient that requires a morphine prescription (medical marijuana patients are treated even worse – I am not one).

So I expect my life will require even more explanations on my behalf after my doctor no longer will be treating me. I fear this and yet know that life will go on until my illness stops me from existing. All in due time.

Wish there was some way to have doctors understand the problems with chronic pain more efficiently so that the patient who is suffering through the agony does not have to try and verabalize/explain their life’s medical history while squirming on a hospital ER bed.

Many times I was told that records from one hospital were not available??? This needs to be addressed as the last thing a patient needs is to be interogated while in tremendous pain.

Good post!

I agree that people do tend to carry their relationship “mode” into virtual interaction. However, if their relationship originated online, their “mode” of interacting has a much greater tendency to be different than their usual “mode” offline.