I feel you and I went through that horror too. By what I'm about to say please know that I don't mean to diminish the severity of your injuries and pain nor do I mean to suggest any lack of diligence on your part in finding the right treatment or implying that any treatment could work for you.
I'm not going to bore you with my story except to say, looking back, I'm amazed I was able to endure such pain for so long. I cry sometimes when I remember it.
I too had to fight to get the treatment I needed to "survive". Surviving was still miserable and I was always at the mercy of my pills and my health care providers. Thank god I make good money and managed to remain employed. I don't know how the average person could have afforded to pay for everything modern medicine has to offer like I did. Scans, injections, surgery, pills, PT...
May I suggest that an expert (I mean a top doc) in traditional Chinese medicine can take you from surviving to truly living. There are some things Western medicine truly excels at and for that I am grateful. However it does have blind spots. Some of those blind spots are perfect for eastern medicine. I thought it was vodoo bullshit but I found a few providers that legitimately changed my life. Plenty eastern medicine docs were total quacks. You get that in the west because it's fairly unregulated. I was lucky to stumble upon some of the best, people who even publish.
With all due respect, "traditional Chinese Medicine" was invented by Mao because he couldn't afford to give his half billion strong agrarian proletariat actual medicine and didn't want them to notice.
>“Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine,” Mao told him, “I personally do not believe in it. I don’t take Chinese medicine.”
> In 1923, Lu Xun, China’s most famous man of letters, reflected critically on his father’s visits to a Chinese doctor, visits that bankrupted the family and failed to produce results. “I still remember the doctor’s discussion and prescription,” Lu wrote, “and if I compare them with my knowledge now, I slowly realize that Chinese doctors are no more than a type of swindler, either intentional or unintentional, and I sympathize with deceived sick people and their families.”
>...Mao’s strategy to deal with these criticisms was quite deliberate—and clever. It consisted of two strategies, both designed to mythologize TCM as being a scientifically sound and harmonious “whole medical system” and to provide “evidence” in the form of testimonials that it worked...
"Textbooks were written that portrayed Chinese medicine as a theoretical and practical whole, and they were taught in newly founded academies of so-called “traditional Chinese medicine,” a term that first appeared in English, not Chinese. Needless to say, the academies were anything but traditional, striving valiantly to “scientify” the teachings of classics that often contradicted one another and themselves..." The second part of the strategy was the dissemination of spectacular anecdotes to “prove” the efficacy of TCM.
It's interesting how we have this cohort of people who don't use TCM, have strong opinions about it, and have no trouble finding sources to back up their claims.
I don't argue with them. Because at one time I knew TCM was bullshit too.
Then we have this other cohort of people with chronic issues who exhausted, or are unsatisfied with, the treatments offered by western medicine. They go on to discover TCM, are healed and then swear by it.
I can't explain this stuff. I think it's weird, but it works.
I mean, you could say I'm a hypochondriac or I have some sort of psychosomatic illness... but I have the scans, labs, and diagnosis to prove it.
> Then we have this other cohort of people with chronic issues who exhausted, or are unsatisfied with, the treatments offered by western medicine.
Except... I'm in that cohort. I've been through the gauntlet too - years and years and thousands of dollars of both real medicine and what I now accept to be fake, that I reached for in desperation. So, I see your anecdata, and raise mine. If only we had some rigorous methodology for determining which conclusion is the correct one, as far as we can tell from the current evidence...
Moveover - trying to present evidence for a field that >specifically< shies away from evidence-based conclusions is a rather silly, IMNSHO. It worked for Mao because he wasn't trying to cure anyone: he was explicitly trying to fool people.
Western medicine may be incomplete, ineffective and often wrong, but it's not founded in willful bullshit.
That being said, there are many ailments that aren't adequately treated by Western Medicine - either because we don't know enough yet or are still constrained by the profit motive to find solutions to symptoms, not cures and whole well being.
I can second this opinion. I suffered 3 crushed vertebra at age 17, and was in a lot of pain for 10 years before I started seeing a unique doctor: he'd been a USA MD for 20 years when his wife died of cancer. He lost faith in western medicine from the experience of guiding his wife through her cancer treatments. So he went to China for 20 years, and became a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor there, practicing in China for 14 years before returning to the states and opening a hybrid western / eastern medical clinic. This guy was the most enlightening individual I've ever met, he was truly walking the path of a master of his domain. I don't mean arrogance, speaking with him was a never ending joy of discovery and learning about myself and my systems, how they integrate and support one another.
Needless to say, he healed my pain, and more. Sadly, he retired about 7 years after I met him. I've not found anyone like him since, and I've tried.
I'm not going to bore you with my story except to say, looking back, I'm amazed I was able to endure such pain for so long. I cry sometimes when I remember it.
I too had to fight to get the treatment I needed to "survive". Surviving was still miserable and I was always at the mercy of my pills and my health care providers. Thank god I make good money and managed to remain employed. I don't know how the average person could have afforded to pay for everything modern medicine has to offer like I did. Scans, injections, surgery, pills, PT...
May I suggest that an expert (I mean a top doc) in traditional Chinese medicine can take you from surviving to truly living. There are some things Western medicine truly excels at and for that I am grateful. However it does have blind spots. Some of those blind spots are perfect for eastern medicine. I thought it was vodoo bullshit but I found a few providers that legitimately changed my life. Plenty eastern medicine docs were total quacks. You get that in the west because it's fairly unregulated. I was lucky to stumble upon some of the best, people who even publish.