In the first of what Nikolas Kristof threatens will be a series of columns in the New York Times he discusses pain:
All this raises the question: Is this physical suffering a canary in the coal mine warning us of larger dysfunction in our society?
Here’s what we do know: Tens of millions of Americans are suffering pain. But chronic pain is not just a result of car accidents and workplace injuries but is also linked to troubled childhoods, loneliness, job insecurity and a hundred other pressures on working families.
As someone who has experienced chronic pain for so long I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t in pain this passage rang true for me:
Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, believes that we already have a toolbox of remedies that can help 80 percent or 90 percent of chronic pain sufferers but that our treatment system and insurance protocols betray those in need.
“We’ve really over-medicalized pain,†he told me. His first recommendation to patients with chronic pain is simple: Get more sleep and exercise. There’s no simple solution, he emphasized, and it takes work by patients to recover.
“I’m a huge advocate of physical therapy,†he added, and he also sees positive results from yoga, acupuncture, acupressure, cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.
but I would add that the very idea that you can escape from pain is flawed. In some ways I blame our consumer culture. Life is not a spectacle to be witnessed but something you experience through active participation. To live is to be in pain. You can escape pain temporarily with drugs or permanently through death.
For me the better solution is learning to tolerate pain and go right on living.
Amongst our pain professionals the current emphasis is on return to function (or maintenance if you are already functional). Its a lot more work than just giving some one pills and the insurance companies dont pay for it very well as a rule. It almost always involves exercise/PT and even OT. We have had OK results with CBT, meditation and yoga. We have several trained acupuncture people but I remain less convinced about this approach. The goal is to get people functional and on a plan where our team can then drop out or just have routine follow ups.
Steve
Believe Stoicism is an idea headed for the trash bin, in favor of the endless whinge.
My husband had some serious
Medical problems which have been
successfully addressed by acupuncture. There are so many remedies that don’t involve western medicine quickie pill approaches.
“Life is not a spectacle to be witnessed but something you experience through active participation. To live is to be in pain. You can escape pain temporarily with drugs or permanently through death.
For me the better solution is learning to tolerate pain and go right on living.”
Well, speaking only of physical pain, and although I’m sure you have made countless inquiries, I wouldn’t give up.
I used to have horrible “migraine” headaches. Pain, nausea, visual disturbance etc. It was simply persevere. However, after seeing a spine surgeon for radiculopathy it came to light that I had no disc at C4-5. Bone on bone, with the poor nerve bearing the brunt. After the fusion, basically never a headache again.
I suffered for years from pain in my right shoulder that made the arm mostly useless.
Shoulder X-rays showed no signs so heat, rest, and tylenol were the prescription.
A friend suggested that I try his chiropractor and he found a vertebrae out of place in my neck.
Did the old twist and jerk four times over four weeks and I haven’t relapsed yet 40 years later.
So, yeah, keep looking.