Managing Pain

Several blog posts these past weeks on pain management. Read one here from Engage the Patient.  Everyone has pain.  Some are called stoic, some sensitive. I remember when my son, Mike, had a lung tumor removed.  Curled up in a fetal position, hardly able to breathe, he told a nurse that his pain was a 6!! A six?! How could that be? I was talking to someone this week, recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, about a new sensation in her abdomen – a pressure. As we explored the new sensation, she said, it’s not pain. It’s a pressure in the morning. It travels, one day here, the next day there in my abdomen. It doesn’t affect my life. It’s annoyingly noticeable. Gets better as the day progresses. I’ve found for myself, that becoming one with unpleasant, unwelcome, strange sensations helps me manage and not freak out too much. For me its neuropathy – electric, radiating tingles or zaps often in my hands and legs, sometimes elsewhere, lasting moments.  Seriously annoying, but doesn’t affect my life. Nowhere near as bad as a toothache. Acupuncture keeps it at bay, reducing intensity and frequency. It’s good to be intimately knowledgeable about pain and share that with your health team. What’s it like? How has it changed? What works to decrease it? What doesn’t? Some people welcome help understanding their pain better. Shouldn’t pain sensation, what helps and what doesn’t be core health information – included with medications, health team members, diagnoses, and procedures? I have found that people at the center of care get this, most health professionals and information technologists don’t. I’m sure they or their loved ones have pain too. What’s missing here?