The Boathouse proudly presents / curiosity with guardrails
Welcome to The Pain Lab. 🐰
My nervous system has been running experimental firmware for years. Nobody shipped the manual, so I keep asking questions, keeping notes, and trying to understand my own experience.
This is where my nerdy side meets the serious work of living with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Expect investigations, lessons, mistakes, humor, and a healthy respect for uncertainty.
Experiencing a benefit does not prove that a treatment caused it or that it will help someone else. This is personal storytelling and educational research, not medical advice. Always discuss treatment decisions with qualified clinicians.
Open notebooks / 01
Pick a rabbit hole.
Saunas and infrared
The Sunlighten years, Solo and mPulse experiences, and the questions that deserve a closer look. Personal memories and medical evidence are not the same kind of source.
Explore infrared therapy →Things I've tried
From physical therapy and spinal-cord stimulation to chiropractic and laser approaches: what happened, what I remember, and what remains unresolved.
Explore treatment experiences →Sleep, activity and ROP
A pain score matters. So does the fishing trip, the sleep afterward, the effort it took, and whether the experience felt worthwhile. Those questions belong together.
Understand Return on Pain →Our very unglamorous superpower / 02
Label the evidence.
There are at least three different things to keep straight: what I remember, what contemporaneous records show, and what published research can support. A good story should not quietly turn into a clinical claim.
Some investigations may stay open for a long time. That's fine. A useful answer sometimes starts with “we don't know yet”—which, I admit, is slightly less satisfying than flipping a giant laboratory switch.
See the research approach →Go outside. Touch the water.
Research is only part of living. Sometimes I need to shut down the tabs, head toward the lake, and let the day be more than numbers and symptoms. The Pain Lab has an unofficial field station: the fishing dock.
Visit the field station →