You rock up to the emergency department of your local hospital with a jagged piece of bone protruding from your leg. Despite seeing the inside of your body on the outside, the medics who made an oath to do no harm tell you to practise mindfulness, exercise for endorphins and see a therapist.

You point to the bone and politely describe the impact the situation is having on your life, somehow finding your manners while in blinding agony in the hope that you’ll be treated better, but they speak over you and repeat the same nonsense over and over. You see a specialist after receiving a referral who repeats the fable you’ve heard already, then charges you many hundreds of dollars for the privilege of hearing it. You now live with the most intense pain you’ve ever experienced, as though there are flames inside your marrow and your limbs now weigh more than a piano, and you begin to hope nothing is real in order to cope.