MedPage Today September 10, 2022
— Illness is sometimes more than what’s on the surface
My patient at a pain clinic on a military base in Virginia carried the deep wounds of war on his face. Not physical scars, but a sallow, slack complexion and a hollow-eyed look of exhaustion and defeat. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he had long been suffering from anxiety, depression, and other complications of PTSD, although his presenting complaint was back pain.
The patient, whom I’ll call Sergeant Carlson, had filled out a personal health inventory (PHI) that I use for all my complex patients, a process used by the Veterans Health Administration that I find incredibly useful in starting to build a healing relationship and guide them...
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