Thread by @speakingabtpain

🚨🚨🚨Vulnerable tweet/thread alert. 🚨🚨🚨

Over the coming weeks, I am going to start a series of tweets & even act like a millennial and hashtag them as #Mythbusters #paintoo #painsplaining #painstigma and #painshaming.

Today is vulnerable part - why I think this is necessary.

I’ve been public that I used opioids after a surgical injury to my spinal cord left me unable to sit or stand and severely limited in walking. #paintoo #painsplaining #painstigma #painshaming

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I’ve never been more aggressively shamed, reduced or had my intelligence questioned more than since publicly donning the cloak of a pain patient. #paintoo #painsplaining #painstigma #painshaming

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It’s remarkable b/c I faced little of this in the *real* world: as I navigated the medical system & worked while visibly disabled. #paintoo #painsplaining #painstigma #painshaming

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Perhaps it was my education, my privilege, my personality or the fact that my treating physicians had my test results & records in front of them. Perhaps in the real world, I had good proxies that I *mattered* - co-workers, friends, a spouse. The why doesn't really matter.
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What matters is that #painshaming, #painsplaining & #painstigma are real. There are so many all-knowing folks industriously reducing access to pain medication (& providing no alternatives).
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Even when we are now "in the room" in the policy context … they continue to pat us on the heads. We are irrelevant, ineffectual, ppl who can’t cope with life. I disagree. #paintoo #painsplaining #painstigma #painshaming
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So I will start to break some #painmyths and #painstigma and #disabilitystigma down in the coming weeks. It’s time to get back to basics. This is you’re teaser. More to come.

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10/ Correction -- *Your* not *You're*... geez. You'd think I might've learned grammar at some point.