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Chronic Pain Research Paper

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There is perhaps no greater joy in life then overcoming an illness you are born with as a child; to finally be able to stop having weekly doctor’s visits and be able to live life like the “normal kids”. But on rare occasion, it becomes a Pyrrhic victory. Having undergone a bone marrow stem cell transplant during which my heart stopped due to a serve allergic reaction, I developed chronic pain from side effects of the transplant. At first, a steady course of Vicodin and morphine made it bearable, but scans showed the devastation it caused to organs in my body such as the liver and kidneys. My doctors gave me the following options: Stop taking the medication and deal with the constant pain or continue with the medication and avoid the pain. …show more content…

I will argue that pain is avoided because it is an unpleasant condition and that chronic pain affects social relationships. An objection to this will argue that the reason for pain is self-preservation and anything that is contradictory to this is infringing on our base desires to live. I will also show how this objection fails since it gets at pain that is a sign for a deeper problem, but fails to assess chronic pain, which is my situation. This paper will focus on situations where the medication is taken for pain management, which should not to be confused with pain relief. The difference, as explained to me by a physician, is that management allows for one to continue living without constant hindrance from pain, whereas relief is to reduce pain to avoid being in …show more content…

This is best evidenced by social experiments in which children deprived of language connections failed to grow properly, having long standing social and developmental issues. But any social relationship requires at least two willing participants who, against their will, has some good connection with the other person. There are instances where a person may discount suffering, such as many domestic abuse cases, but those are not the focus here. This social connection provides the bond that we as humans find integral to our life, but also provides us with the ability to live a life that has some quality. Without social interactions, we lose one of the essential features that allows a human life to prosper, as evidenced by the research with the children. An impedance on the ability to prosper of any human would be morally

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