It’s a terrible feeling to believe you are being taken advantage of by someone for whom you’ve sacrificed so much of your own life. And there are certainly times, perhaps most commonly associated with treatment of exaggerated or imagined acute pain, when physicians perceive they are being manipulated and used. It’s arguably a worse, more isolating feeling to be in legitimate pain and be deprived of relief. This withholding of pain relief by an emotionally guarded physician is damaging to everyone involved, patient and physician alike.
