About the pain

I pretty much never talk about it, but I think I'm underestimating the effect my chronic pain is having on my life.

For the past six years I have had chronic pain, nothing seems to work against it, and as time goes by, it seems to get worse and worse. I don't talk about it for two reasons. Firstly, I hate to complain about personal problems, and it's almost impossible to talk about it without sounding like I'm complaining. Secondly, the world is so screwed up right now that despite the intensity that the pain often reaches, it's not in the top five of the list of things that I'm worried about right now.

The reason I'm bringing it up now is because I am considering the possibility that the pain is having an effect on dealing with those things that are more important. When you feel like your head is simultaneously in a vise and on fire, it's difficult to find mental clarity to deal with life in general. The problem is that I don't know if putting more focus on the pain is going to lead to a solution. I've already talked to several doctors about it, including a neurologist who has tried about a dozen treatments to zero effect.

The nature of the pain is odd, partially because it's not all pain. Sometimes I describe whatever the condition is as "A smorgasbord of unpleasant tactile hallucinations." Usually the only thing that makes it go away is falling asleep, which is difficult to do when I'm in pain, but I almost always wake up symptom-free. Then once I'm awake, the symptoms eventually creep back up on me.

I used to call it "long COVID" and who knows? Maybe it is. It pretty much started when I got COVID, and at first it was mainly COVID-like symptoms, but over the years, the symptom list has gotten longer and stranger:

Headache, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, sore teeth, sore lips, sensation of teething, sensation of plugged sinuses, sensation of plugged nostrils, sensation of having been punched in the nose, sensation of hair being pulled out, sensation of difficulty breathing, sensation of tongue being pulled out, burning eyes, burning skin on my face, sensitivity to spiciness, tasting things that aren't there, feeling hunger when my stomach is full, sensitivity to water on my skin, burning in the soles of my feet, feeling like there's a piece of string wrapped around one of my ears, feeling like my teeth are razor sharp and cutting up the inside of my mouth, back and neck pain, sugar burning my mouth, salt burning my mouth, hair burning the side of my face,

All of these symptoms come and go at random, although once again usually later in the day. I feel fine in the morning, and a few times I have managed to make them go away with a nap in the afternoon. On a handful of occasions, they have gone away on their own, at least two of those times exactly at midnight (and one time I wasn't looking at a clock). It usually seems to be stress related.

Anyway, once again, I'm starting to seriously consider that this condition is standing in the way of more than just enjoyment of life. Maybe it's standing in the way of being functional in general. But I don’t know how to fix it. So what do I do, then?

COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines

Okay, I wanted to take some time to explain how the mRNA vaccines work. I'm not a biologist, but perhaps that's a good thing, as I have studied enough of the science to understand how they work, and I believe I can explain it in very plain English.

First of all, it's worth dispelling some rumors that were common in the early days of the vaccines, and I still hear occasionally today. The vaccines do not have any affect on a person's DNA; your DNA is stored in the center of your body's cells, and there is nothing in the vaccines that actually enters into the cells.

The vaccines are essentially made of mRNA, which is something that naturally occurs in the human body. When your cells need to build a protein for some reason, your body produces mRNA to tell your cells to do so. The mRNA is essentially a chemical blueprint explaining how to build that particular protein.

What scientists have done in the case of COVID-19 is they have used the body's method of using mRNA to get the body to build a special protein that is called the "spike protein". While the technology of pretty much every previous vaccine was to inject the body with some weakened form of the virus you were supposed to be getting protection from, these new vaccines have mRNA blueprints of the "spike protein", which mimics the form of the actual virus. In both cases, your immune system reacts as though it is infected, and fights off the infection, but has the advantage of not actually fighting a live, dangerous virus.

Unlike what many people have either outright said or merely implied, this process *is* creating a form of natural immunity. Your immune system is learning what it's like to have an infection so that if it gets another infection (this time a "real" one) it has the tools to fight it in the form of antibodies. Contrary to what most people think, vaccines were never about stopping you from getting infected; they were about teaching your immune system to deal with an infection effectively.

Now yes, there is a downside in the case of COVID-19, and it's similar to the problem with the flu vaccine. No vaccine is 100% effective, but in the case of some diseases, the effectiveness is actually quite a ways off from 100%. The flu is a disease that frequently mutates, and will tend to come back different every flu season. So if you get a flu vaccine, it actually is a vaccine against two or three variants of the flu virus that scientists are expecting to be going around. Like the flu, the COVID virus has done a lot of mutating, and there are a lot of variants. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are only designed to help your immune system fight off the variants that existed at the time the vaccine was developed, so, yes, a vaccinated person can get COVID.

The good part of this, and a big part of the reason doctors are suggesting getting the vaccine even if you've been infected, is that while the vaccine won't stop you from getting infected, it still has been shown to help you fight the virus so that your infection is less severe than it likely would have been without the vaccine.

As for what happens in your body when you actually get the vaccine, the mRNA in the vaccine goes to your cells and without entering them, it delivers the message to build the spike protein. Having delivered the message, it naturally breaks up and dissolves like every mRNA in your body. When the spike protein is built, your immune system reacts, knowing immediately that this protein is not one that belongs. It figures out how to break it down and eat it, which is exactly what it will do to the virus if it encounters it later. So within about 48 hours or so, there is nothing left from the vaccine but the knowledge of how to fight the virus.