Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

Not the point I was making.

Well, the only point I am trying to make is that treating the underlying cause of pain is better than just taking pain killers. If you aren't trying to refute that, what on earth is your point?

You constantly speak to the potential value of your experience and how doctors ignore it. If you have a particularly mild mutation, it's hard to extrapolate from what you do to deal with it to benefits for people with mutations that manifest more severely.

I speak from experience. Why that is such a problem for me to do is a thing I cannot fathom. Other members of this same forum routinely speak from experience as well without that being a problem.

Yes, I have a mild form. But I nonetheless have gotten off many drugs and grown healthier when that is supposedly not possible. So has my son with the same diagnosis. And I have known people with more severe forms who benefited from what I know. So I have good reason to believe that it generalizes.

But when I began to get better, my physician expressed no curiosity and simply scheduled me fewer appointments. So, that leaves me with sounding like a quack in online forums while trying hard to tread lightly so as to not wind up like Semmelweis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

I say again: If you do not disagree with my point that addressing underlying causes is better than pain killers, why on earth do you need to try to dismiss the personal experiences that created that opinion? What does it matter if my deadly condition kills more slowly than average for my deadly condition?

I have not dismissed your experience.

I asked you a question about how you reflect on it.

This is a great question, as it is the root of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). CBT has been proven to improve some chronic pain situations.

You removed the word obnoxious from the comment where you asked me to please not email you. I think you know full well you are being dismissive and, to add insult to injury, framing it as me being neurotic.

I post comments and articles about a great many things. I write blog posts about a great many things. Most of it gets essentially ignored. My comments on certain subjects get big (often negative) reactions, and not because I am trying to jerk anyone's chain. If I had the power to engineer social outcomes to that degree, I would use it to put money in my pocket and stop being so poor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com