just how painful is being SMO?

[Brandy]

So check my logic here...

• 2+ years ago I had my DS at 314 lbs, 5 feet 7, that made me a BMI of 50.

• 2 weeks ago I was diagnosed with moderate level arthritis.

• The only reason I asked for the x-rays was because when I sat on the cold and damp ground whilst playing with my dogs, I was physically unable to walk for around 10 steps when I got up.

Arthritis, especially at the moderate level, is considered a very painful disease, "like a slow fire always burning in your joints."

I never noticed it until after they told me. Matter-o-fact, I had started running and other high impact exercise during this time because I felt so much better than I used to. Occasionally a doctor would ask me, "How is your energy level? Is it normal?" and I would be like "How the hell would I know?"


- - - - - -


MAYBE:

Losing weight was reliving my overall pain at a greater rate my arthritis was starting to cause pain.

- - - - -

Being SMO isn't listed as a "painful" condition. It is really hard to quantify pain in general, but if I can get to moderate arthritis and not even notice ... Doesn't that say something??

THEY say "during walking, the hips, knees, and ankles bear 3 to 5 times a person's total body weight. For every pound a person is overweight, 3 to 5 pounds of extra weight is added to each knee during walking. In contrast, a 10 pound weight loss essentially relieves 30 to 50 pounds of additional stress on the joints." I can't find the study, but I seen the "for every ten pounds, you drop 4 pounds of pressure on your joints" before. I lost ~180 lbs, so that would be the equivalent of 72 pounds of pressure off my joints.

It is awful that I get treatments, pain killers, ribbons and organizations for my arthritis when it is nothing compared to the pain and isolation I felt as a SMO. If you are still a part of that world, you have my respect, it is a very hard life.

Do you guys think I'm off base with my pain assumptions here? Do you think I was alone in quietly being in that much pain? It came on so gradually I don't think I ever really noticed, other than I just felt bad all the time.

..brandy.

 

[Brandy]

I lost ~180 lbs, so that would be the equivalent of 72 pounds of pressure off my joints.

My math was wrong.

I lost 172 lbs, I don't know when I started to round up that much! So that is 68.8 lbs of pressure.

It doesn't change my point, but when I realized I was too embarrassed just to let it lie.

 

[southernlady]

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking.

Part of what some people have found (and @DuodenalSwitchaRoo is a classic case) is that her pain level actually went very high after she lost a considerable amount of weight because the medical community STOPPED blaming her weight for her arthritis and started realizing maybe her weight had NOTHING to do with it.

I know my arthritis is worse now than 6 years ago but then again, I suspect it would have been worse whether I was 150 (now) or over 200 (6 years ago). Much of mine is age related. And genetics play a part in that as well.

 

[Brandy]

I could have my people confused, but I believe that @DuodenalSwitchaRoo has a specific medical condition that was true before the weight loss and feels worse now, but it a diagnosable different thing than just obesity. Aren't her nerves improperly shielded? In which case, losing weight would make that worse. That isn't at all what I'm talking about.

And I'm not talking about getting old. It sucks. No doubt about it.

If before my surgery I had gone to pain clinic to get some ease the strain that my body was under they wouldn't have helped because SMO is not on their list of medical conditions that cause pain.

Now they would help me, because of the arthritis but I'm only in about half the pain I used to be in. Maybe even less. I don't know how to know unless they heal up my arthritis and I see if any other pain is still lurking under my awareness.

There are still a lot of people who are obese enough that it causes them a lot of pain every day and they don't get medically recognized support of having a painful condition.

That is wrong.

 

[DSRIGGS]

I have more pain now than I ever had. Losing roughly have my body weight has certainly not improved my pain level as I had hoped.

 

[southernlady]

I could have my people confused, but I believe that @DuodenalSwitchaRoo has a specific medical condition that was true before the weight loss and feels worse now, but it a diagnosable different thing than just obesity. Aren't her nerves improperly shielded? In which case, losing weight would make that worse. That isn't at all what I'm talking about.

And I'm not talking about getting old. It sucks. No doubt about it.

If before my surgery I had gone to pain clinic to get some ease the strain that my body was under they wouldn't have helped because SMO is not on their list of medical conditions that cause pain.

Now they would help me, because of the arthritis but I'm only in about half the pain I used to be in. Maybe even less. I don't know how to know unless they heal up my arthritis and I see if any other pain is still lurking under my awareness.

There are still a lot of people who are obese enough that it causes them a lot of pain every day and they don't get medically recognized support of having a painful condition.

That is wrong.

Hers is arthritis but until she started losing weight, they blamed it on her weight. The fat was cushioning her bones not the nerves. She explains it better than I do.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

I could have my people confused, but I believe that @DuodenalSwitchaRoo has a specific medical condition that was true before the weight loss and feels worse now, but it a diagnosable different thing than just obesity. Aren't her nerves improperly shielded? In which case, losing weight would make that worse. That isn't at all what I'm talking about.

And I'm not talking about getting old. It sucks. No doubt about it.

If before my surgery I had gone to pain clinic to get some ease the strain that my body was under they wouldn't have helped because SMO is not on their list of medical conditions that cause pain.

Now they would help me, because of the arthritis but I'm only in about half the pain I used to be in. Maybe even less. I don't know how to know unless they heal up my arthritis and I see if any other pain is still lurking under my awareness.

There are still a lot of people who are obese enough that it causes them a lot of pain every day and they don't get medically recognized support of having a painful condition.

That is wrong.

Years ago, my BFF went to a doctor complaining of a sore throat.

Dr: smoke?
BFF: yeah.
Dr: there's your problem...stop smoking.
BFF: i did.
Dr: when?
BFF: about ten years ago.

It went downhill from there...he asked why she said "yeah," she responded that one word questions deserve one word answers.

Point #1--She went elsewhere and they treated her for...strep throat.
Point #2--Ten or fifteen years later, she did indeed die of lung cancer.
Point #3--It may be that whatever we present with that pisses them off the most is what they decide to NOT treat, especially if they decide the problem is self-inflicted. (And my personal philosophy on this is that most of us spend a great deal of time choreographing our own demise...very few things are not, in some way, self-inflicted.)

So there.


ETA...maybe the excess weight exacerbated your pain symptoms? Harder to walk, harder to breathe, harder to sleep well enough to deal with pain and so on?

 

[Spiky Bugger]

PS...doctors sometimes say the dumbest things...I had one who kept repeatedly cautioning me to NOT take some drug on an empty stomach. My BMI at the time was 50+.

I tilted my head like a confused puppy and said, "Okay...pop quiz! Look at me and estimate when you think I last HAD an empty stomach."