Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people whose doctors dismissed them or made them feel like their pain was all in their head because they didn’t get better by treating their symptoms, and often the source of pain couldn’t be seen on an image. If you know my story, you know that this happened to me. I had excruciating pain and severe loss of function (I couldn’t make a fist with my right hand, so I couldn’t do basic things like hold a pen to write my name), and I had doctor after doctor tell me that I was fine because the MRIs didn’t show any signs of nerve compression.