Nammu trying everything you possibly can before resorting to meds is a great idea, I completely agree however people with pain should not go to a chiropractic care setting without first having a complete set of x-rays to be sure that nothing is seriously out of whack.

And the OP is definitely out of whack if they have plates and screws, there "new normal" is accepting that normal for them has changed due to trauma.

Ultimately pain is your bodies way of saying hey look over here something is wrong! of course if you smash your thumb with a hammer it does not take Captain Obvious to know just what the problem is in the case of chronic pain the cause and answer is not always that simple.

I had a car accident many years ago with no major damage and years later I woke up unable to turn my head , so a friend said my chiropractor is awesome I'll take you to her , so I went and yep she hooked me right up got me functioning again and I liked it and stayed with it for about 6 years until.

I was forced to retire and relocated 15 years later I began having having bizarre episodes of pain & paralysis that would come and go in all different parts of the body which naturally concerned me and caused me to go to the Doctors, now this is not the cause of my now chronic pain or of the paralysis however after some X-rays and a couple good spins around the MRI they did tell me a scary thing they noticed which was my c5- c6 were bulging on my central cord and i am 1 bad fall or traffic accident away from Tetrapilegia and I am also therefore a minor chiropractic misalignment away from it also, and believe me they happen sometimes ( my own chiropractor years ago adjusted me and then said you can get, up and I couldn't because I was slightly misaligned and unable to move, she corrected it and everything was just fine ) and like I say none of this has anything to do with my chronic pain or being in a wheelchair now.

But people need to know the state of there body before chiropractic care so that they do not make what could be an irreversible error in an effort to do something good for their body, some might think it over caution but there are "walking" time bombs out there, and a one in million accident is still preventable.

So know your body and what your "normal" is before hand.

Ultimately if you do end up with medication as your only interventionable action, remember there is a pain pyramid just like the food pyramid and start at the bottom and work up to where you need to be.

Any Doctor who proposes you start with an opiod agent is not your friend or anyone you want to employ ( thankfully the bad ones are being weeded out) as with most things take it cautiously, if you wanted to take up running you would not buy new sneakers and go run the New York City Marathon, you would start by breaking in those sneakers and then running around the block a few times and easing into it, before you started running miles and so forth.

Medication is the same idea, you need to take only as much as you need to manage your pain, too much too quickly or too often is dangerous, and so is the idea many people have of zero pain, medicating all your pain away is wrong and potentially toxic if not straight out lethal ,pain is natural and one of your bodies defenses to keep you healthy.

Managing your pain is not medicating it into oblivion, it's taking what's prescribed when it's prescribed to get your pain to a tolerable level that you can cope with and not be overwhelmed, and at the same time working on your coping and life skills to develope even more effective strategies to help you go forward with your life.

Remembering that your pain does not stop and start your life it coexist's within all that is good about you and your life, will keep you healthy and safe.

Healthy, Wealthy and Wise is a good thing to strive for, but may not come all together or at all, I was never a Boy scout but they certainly where right about "be prepared", life is a series of Journeys, your doing something wrong or plain illegal if it is merely a Trip.

No I don't charge, advice is free, opinions are probably just that and wrong, and wisdom is acquired not taught or beat into any of us with a shoe.

This is just the ramblings of an insomniac and experienced pain patient, and in this current climate being an experienced pain patient are dirty words.

Dirty words used to be swearing in public or in front of women , now its accepted most places like Visa, and the women doing it are posting it on the internet. Things sure do change.

I take everything seriously, but try to talk humorously and with honesty so as to not alarm or overwhelm people.

Peace

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk