Word: paines
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McCain dutifully gave the questioners the responses they were looking for, trying his best to show that he could feel their pain. "I probably should have mentioned what you all already know: These are tough times," he said. It was hard not to wonder whether a man who endured such extraordinary pain for more than five years in Hanoi was really as troubled by dropping real estate values as he tried to suggest. But his supporters seemed to appreciate his rather ordinary answers, and they certainly appreciated his remarkable life story; when he was done, he was mobbed by adoring...
...have a bad back and not even know it. One of the commonest back problems physicians treat, called spinal stenosis, gives leg symptoms: pain, tingling, numbness and weakness down the legs, knees and thighs - and often without back pain. Few orthopedists can get through their week without seeing a patient with spinal stenosis - the problem is just so widespread. Worse, it doesn't really get better. With all the pills, therapies, shots, braces and exercises we prescribe, it's a rare case of spinal stenosis that we can make go away...
...left to the orthopedists and neurosurgeons who are designated as "spine surgeons," and who restrict their practices solely to this procedure. Spinal stenosis operations are among the most common, the most expensive and the most feared, with lots of complications - paralysis, blood clots, infection, leaking of spinal fluid, intractable pain...
...hundred patients I've told about that paper over the past five months, not one has chosen to undergo surgery. Real patients are scared of being cut open, of getting infections, not waking up, becoming paralyzed. They're scared of the pain. And they don't care about statistics. The smarter ones understand how complicated a decision it is to have an operation. What smart patients want is something beyond statistics - most call it judgment - as they decide between the pain they're living with now versus the risks of a procedure that can't guarantee a cure...
There is no problem with statistical studies. They have been our trusty bloodhounds, tracking down new medical knowledge for decades. But "evidence-based research" is a mongrel, kept by business interests feigning patient advocacy, rarely, if ever, fed by the hand that helps when you're in pain...