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New Chronic Pain Treatments Help the Whole Person
Women who live with chronic pain seek relief through all kinds of treatments, from acupuncture to physical therapy, medication to psychology.

But in recent years, researchers have proven a multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain management can offer substantial and sustained pain relief.

Even if you have explored multiple treatment modalities, you likely haven’t experienced a true multidisciplinary pain management program. That’s because they are few and far between. These complex team-driven programs require resources typically found only at large medical institutions. Some patients travel from far away to receive care because the potential life-changing effects are worth it.

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What is a multidisciplinary pain management program?

In a multidisciplinary approach, a team of clinicians collaborates to create custom treatment programs for each patient, using a variety of modalities. Patients often spend many days a week, sometimes for multiple weeks, in a program.

“It’s more of a patient-centered, goal-oriented, holistic approach,” said Tim J. Lamer, MD, pain management specialist at Mayo Clinic and president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Lamer explained that multidisciplinary pain management is like a puzzle where every piece matters—and they all fit together.

Institutions like the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Pain Management Center in Chicago provide a model for multidisciplinary care, according to attending physician Shana Margolis, MD. There, most patients have previously tried one discipline at a time but not an approach that combines them all. The Shirley Ryan AbilityLab uses a biopsychosocial approach, meaning its team treats biological, psychological, and social drivers of pain, both as individual forces and as forces that intersect with one another.

Multidisciplinary pain management programs may include:
- Pain psychology: Teaching patients how mood affects pain and how pain affects mood, often using cognitive behavioral therapy. “When you’re in pain, it can make you more irritable, anxious, and depressed, which then can make it harder to manage your pain, and you can get stuck in a vicious cycle,” said Margolis.
- Biofeedback therapy: Providing a variety of relaxation techniques that employ monitoring technology that gives patients instant feedback on their efforts.
- Physical therapy: Including time spent on strengthening, range of motion, biomechanics, and pacing.
- Occupational therapy: Focusing on ergonomics and improving a patient’s ability to perform everyday tasks with less pain.
- Vocational therapy: Helping patients learn to reclaim their working life through a variety of strategies.
- Art therapy: Using creativity to cope with pain, express emotions, and even reduce symptoms.
- Interventional therapies: Employing techniques like nerve blocks, injections, or electrical stimulator devices to treat the neurological aspect of pain.
- Physician and nurse monitoring: Ensuring patients are using medications properly, that comorbid conditions are also well-managed, and more.
Margolis said a key aspect of a multidisciplinary approach is that the patient is at the center of the program, playing an active role in their own care, as opposed to simply receiving treatment. “We’re trying to give patients tools in their toolbox so they can learn to self-manage their pain,” she said.

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Research shows results

Lamer said most patients in a multidisciplinary approach experience improved function, mental health and management of pain in their busy lives. And there’s research to prove it, he said, including at least one study that followed patients for as long as 13 years who experienced long-term benefits.

More research by Shirley Ryan Ability Lab Pain Management Center and the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago showed patients experienced improvement in pain, pain-related anxiety, ability to cope, and depression, among others.

Margolis said that while many people can benefit from a multidisciplinary pain management approach, patients with widespread pain conditions like complex regional pain syndrome and fibromyalgia are likely to experience the greatest benefit. “Any kind of chronic pain condition that’s really affecting the patient’s lifestyle is where we excel,” she said. Emphasis on the mind-body connection and mindfulness plays a significant role in a patient’s success.

Ready to take action?

If you’re looking for a multidisciplinary pain management program, ask at your nearest large medical center. If there isn’t one in your immediate area, reach out to reputable programs and ask if they can recommend a provider in your area.

The American Chronic Pain Association offers an extensive overview of pain management programs.

The Alliance for Balanced Pain Management offers resources for patients seeking to understand their treatment options.

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01/09/2023
Why I’m Talking About My Chronic Pain and Why You Should Too

As a physical therapist, my job is to assist my patients to move better, get stronger, and most often to reduce their pain. This is an important, gratifying, and yet often challenging profession. This is in part due to my own daily chronic pain that is primarily in my low back and tailbone. I have been in some level of pain constantly for the past ten years.

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While there are times that I share my experience with my patients, I usually smile, persevere and act as if everything is fine. I think many others with chronic pain can relate to this alternate persona—the brave mask so many chronic pain warriors put on daily.

This is one of the tricky things about living with chronic pain. Most of the time I just want to feel normal. I want to go about my day-to-day tasks as if everything was not a monumental challenge and a huge energy expense. I want to pretend that my chronic pain has not affected my job satisfaction, my relationships and my feelings of self-worth.

There are other times when I want to scream. I want to wear a sign across my chest that says, “Please be gentle with me, I have chronic pain.” I want everyone around me know what I’m going through, why I am the way I am. I want my struggles heard, to know that it’s not easy. It is not pity I seek, but rather compassionate recognition of the daily challenges of living with chronic pain.

I’m often afraid to talk about my struggles with chronic pain. This would mean ripping up the mask––that brave face that I have worked so hard to maintain. My hope is that if I am true and open about my experiences more, a few people might feel less alone. A few people may push aside the fear of stigmatization and feel comfortable to be open and honest about what they are going through.

Early in my clinical training, a patient taught me an important lesson. She told me to never tell someone, “I know how you feel.” Her statement took me aback, but her explanation has really stuck with me. It is true. I could never really know what someone is feeling. It is impossible to know just from their explanations, my own examination and my pre-conceived beliefs and education.

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I cannot innately tell how past experiences have affected someone. I cannot exactly grasp the psychological impacts that their illness or pain has had on them. I do not know all other aspects of their life that this has affected. I can’t ever fully understand what someone else is going through, but I can listen. I can respect someone’s experience and I can do my best to validate their concerns. I can call on my past experiences of others discrediting my own feelings and I can work hard to not allow this to happen to another person—at least when they are working with me.

I learned that opening up about my pain did lead to judgment from a few—one family member told someone that I write about my chronic pain, as a way to complain and vent. Many more have provided support and encouragement. I also learned that ignoring your pain and suffering in silence does not make it go away. I have found that by acknowledging my pain it encourages me to seek more treatment and work harder toward finding relief.

Most importantly, talking about my pain has allowed me to maintain the healthy human connection that we all crave and need so badly in this life. It is so much easier to genuinely connect with the people in your life when you are raw and honest. It is never easy, but eventually you will have to take the mask off and let the person see the real you.

I hope that you will find that by talking about your experiences with chronic pain and acknowledging its presence will lessen the power it has over your life. By ignoring my pain, I felt helpless. I let my chronic pain determine what kind of day I was going to have, how long a relationship could last, and how many hours I could stand to work in a week.

While the process is ongoing, I am happy to be taking steps to regain control and be honest about my experiences. I am in far less discomfort than I used to be and now I have something even more important—the hope that one day I might actually be pain-free.

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01/08/2023
Smart Steps for Healthy Feet

Are your feet something you think about only when they hurt? Simple steps can protect them from common problems, some of which are hard to get rid of.

READ: The Ways to Treat Your Feet Right

The first step is to wear shoes, such as water slip-ons, in moist environments like indoor swimming pools and communal showers at the gym. Damp areas allow bacteria and viruses to thrive, and walking barefoot makes you more susceptible to common infections like nail fungus, athlete’s foot and warts.

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You don’t have to give up style, but skip shoes that don’t feel comfortable from the moment you try them on. Calluses, corns, blisters and irritations can all result from or get worse from shoes that pinch and don’t fit well. It’s a mistake to expect that the shoes will “give” and feel better over time.

Choose hosiery with care. That means buying socks and tights made from breathable fabrics. It’s not always possible to wear cotton, so if your feet get sweaty when you wear hosiery made of synthetics like nylon, take these steps: Carefully wash and dry feet when you get home, hand-wash the hosiery every night and let shoes dry out before you wear them again — you may need to wait 48 hours.

A pedicure might be a great treat for your feet, but beware of harmful practices, both at salons and at home. It’s OK to gently slough off dead skin cells with a pumice stone after soaking your feet, but tools with razor blades are dangerous.

Cutting cuticles is also unsafe. Gently push them back with an orange wood stick. To prevent ingrown toenails, clip straight across, not in a curve. The edges should be just a few millimeters shy of the toe tips. Use an emery board to smooth any ragged spots straight across.

If you’re concerned about any changes in your feet, promptly contact your doctor or a podiatrist for an evaluation.

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01/07/2023
Nerve Block Technique Might Help Chronic Back Pain

A procedure that uses radio waves to treat chronic low back pain provided long-lasting relief to a small group of patients, researchers report.

Called intradiscal biacuplasty (IDB), the procedure uses two water-cooled needles to blast radiofrequency energy at the nerve fibers within and around a spinal disc that’s begun to degenerate but has not ruptured, explained lead researcher Dr. Michael Gofeld.

“Basically you’re destroying the nerve fibers, which will lead to the elimination of pain,” he said. Gofeld is a chronic pain management specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital and Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.

A year out from treatment, half of the patients who received IDB in the study said they still were experiencing significant pain reduction, Gofeld and his colleagues reported.

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The treatment is specifically to help people with discogenic back pain, Gofeld said — pain related to discs that are deteriorating but have not ruptured.

Prior studies have found that discogenic back pain accounts for 39 percent of cases of chronic lower back pain, he said.

The idea of using radio waves to treat back pain has been around for a quarter-century, Gofeld said. But recent breakthroughs using water-cooled needles have made the technology potentially more effective.

“If the needle gets too hot, the energy will not spread efficiently enough,” Gofeld said.

The procedure takes about a half hour, followed by six weeks of physical therapy, he said. Ideal patients have lower back pain that doesn’t shoot down the legs and limited disc degeneration, with no significant tears or ruptures.

Dr. John Mafi, an internist and assistant professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles, pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved IDB for use in 2007. But the technology has not been widely adopted in the United States, he said.

“It’s not widely used,” Mafi said. “Insurance doesn’t seem to cover it yet, and that may be because they want to see more evidence.”

For example, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ruled in September 2008 that the government insurance plans would not cover any radiofrequency treatments for low back pain. The CMS decision memo concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that the procedures would improve health outcomes.

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Gofeld’s study, which was funded by device manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corp., focused on 22 patients who received IDB treatment alongside typical medical care for back pain.

These patients originally showed less pain at six months following treatment, and now a one-year follow-up found that their pain reduction and improved function had continued, Gofeld said.

The one-year report also included 25 members of the initial control group for the study, who at first only received typical medical care that included physical therapy and exercises.

These patients were allowed to “cross over” after six months and receive IDB. They also experienced some pain relief and improved function, the Canadian researchers reported.

However, their pain reduction was not as strong as that experienced by the original treatment group, Gofeld said.

“We can infer from this result that the sooner we do the procedure and get the patient into rehabilitation treatment, the better will be the result,” he said.

Researchers also found no significant side effects associated with IDB.

The findings were presented Feb. 19 at the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s annual meeting in Palm Springs, Calif. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Mafi said the small number of patients involved makes this more of a “pilot study.”

“I wouldn’t jump to any changes in policy based on this study,” Mafi said. “This is a promising start, but now it’s time to do a rigorous clinical trial from this pilot data.”

Dr. Nathaniel Tindel, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, also sounded a cautious note, based on both the small number of participants and the fact that numerous prior radiofrequency treatments have failed to help people with low back pain.

“Whenever there are a plethora of procedures offered to treat a condition which is known to heal best when left alone, those procedures are either all very effective or equally ineffective,” Tindel said. “Unfortunately, medical research has already shown us that intradiscal therapy falls into the latter category, and to date has not been shown to have long-term effect on back pain and disc disease.”

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01/01/2023
Don’t Wake Mom Today
This Mother’s Day, take pity on the woman who cooks, cleans, shops, fusses and worries over you.

Before you overwhelm her with breakfast in bed, let her sleep in.

It’s no secret that women are chronically sleep deprived, and moms, especially working moms, are at the top of that list.

According to a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, almost three out of four American women between the ages of 30 and 60 don’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night during the week. The average weeknight’s sleep for women is only about six-and-a-half hours.

“Sleep deprivation is epidemic in the United States,” says Gary Zammit, director of the Sleep Disorders Institute at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. “Most of us need eight hours or more in order to feel refreshed and fully functional during the day. The majority of us are getting less than that.”

“It’s part of the achievement orientation that’s become unbalanced in our society, which results in a lack of respect and attention to rest and relaxation, not to mention play,” adds Dr. Suzanne Griffin, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

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What are the reasons for the lack of sleep and lack of quality sleep? They can run the gamut from hormonal fluctuations to depression and anxiety to just being a vigilant mom, the experts say.

“The most obvious one is hormonal fluctuations, which, to some extent, defines femaleness, and there are several different times in life when we encounter this,” Griffin says. Menopausal, perimenopausal and postpartum women are most likely to have disturbances in sleep continuity. Also, one quarter to one third of women will experience some sleep disturbance while they have premenstrual syndrome (PMS) at least half the time, Griffin adds.

Women are also more likely to suffer from certain diseases that are associated with sleep disturbances, such as fibromyalgia and depression.

Moms have additional difficulties.

“For many mothers, their brain is set to a level of vigilance and awareness even during sleep that allows them to wake up to small changes in the environment — whimpers, coughs, kids getting up and padding around,” Griffin says. “What happens in particularly sensitive people, once they get that level of arousal going, their brain is trained to wake up, and then they develop a more chronic sleep disturbance.”

There’s also a social aspect related to the increasing number of roles that women are taking on in society.

“As women have occupied more important roles in the workplace, they haven’t necessarily relieved themselves of their traditional roles in the home,” Zammit says. “For women, particularly mothers, they go out and work and then they come home and for the most part they bear the greatest burden in the family of caring for their spouse, cooking, laundry, children and so on. Most of them fit it in by cheating on their sleep.”

The consequences can be huge.

“Even a small amount of sleep deprivation — say an hour a night when it occurs chronically over an extended period [of] one or two weeks — that can have an impact that is as significant as staying awake all night long and then trying to function,” Zammit says.

People who don’t get enough sleep are often not at peak performance. Their memory, concentration, cognitive functioning, attention and mood all suffer.

Fatigued people are also at greater risk for accidents and injury, especially motor vehicle accidents. The National Transportation Safety Board reports that 100,000 police-reported crashes each year are the direct result of drowsy driving, resulting in more than 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in economic costs.

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But don’t lose hope. There are several common-sense things moms and all women can do to try to get their sleep and life back on track. Try these steps:
- “The most important thing is learning to say ‘no,’ and the second most important is delegating,” Griffin says. Try setting limits on the amount of time you are willing to devote to particular activities, and determine what your most important priorities are. For Griffin, mothering her children was the clear priority that led her to change her schedule and professional commitments.
- Stay away from alcohol and caffeine, both of which can alter your sleep for the worse.
- Dedicate the bedroom to sleep and love only, Griffin suggests. If you have trouble sleeping or getting to sleep, don’t read, talk on the phone, watch TV or make lists in bed.
- Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
- Relax for an hour before going to bed, Griffin advises. “If you have been busy, busy, busy until the minute you get into bed, it’s going to be difficult to turn off your head,” she explains.
- Turn the clock around so, if you are awake, you’re not watching the time.
- Try a light snack before you go to bed so your blood sugar doesn’t drop and wake you up in the middle of the night. Avoid snacks with a heavy sugar content, Griffin advises, and go for cheese and crackers or cheese and fruit instead. Don’t have any heavy meals within three hours of going to bed.
- Stay away from herbal remedies because in the United States, it’s hard to know what the potency of a compound is. Opt instead for herbal teas such as peppermint, Sleepy Time and chamomile, Griffin says.
- “Exercising is really important for promoting good sleep, but it needs to occur more than three hours before bedtime, otherwise it will interfere with getting to sleep,” Griffin says.
- If you find you can’t sleep after 15 minutes in bed, get out of bed and go to a quiet, dimly lit place where you can relax until you fall asleep. Don’t get up to do the laundry.
- If your sleep disorder persists, visit a sleep-disorders center, but make sure it’s accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Zammit says.
“It’s important to realize that better living does not necessarily mean more living. It might mean better quality living,” Zammit says.

“As people think about what life experiences are like going through life fatigued, they’re not really getting the most out of their lives and they’re probably not delivering the most to their families,” he adds. “So, actually saying that, ‘yes, sleep is an essential for me,’ is part of setting the foundation for a good life.”

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12/30/2022
Pain: Another Gender Gap

Like many other things in life, pain discriminates by gender. Women, studies show, feel pain more intensely than men, suffer disproportionately from conditions like chronic pain and migraines, and are more likely to be undertreated for pain than men.

More pain, no gain

More than 70 percent of people who report suffering chronic pain are women, according to a 2003 report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America. Compared with men, women are more prone to a wide range of painful conditions, including migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, temporomandibular joint disorder, and fibromyalgia.

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Women also appear to feel pain more intensely than men. Lab studies show that if you expose women and men to the same painful situation, such as being exposed to gradually increasing heat, women are usually the first to say ouch. On the plus side, other studies show that women handle pain better than men do. This might be because women have more experience coping with the predictable pains of menstruation and childbirth, and know how to prepare for painful episodes.

Ironically, the half of the population that feels the most pain is also the half that is least likely to get the treatment they need. The National Women’s Health Resource Center reports that women with chronic pain often have trouble convincing doctors of the severity of their pain. As a result, they’re also more likely than men to have their pain undertreated.

Some may be tempted to write off these differences as attributable to cultural influences. After all, there’s no doubt that boys and girls grow up with different outlooks on pain. Girls often feel free to cry over small injuries, while boys feel extra pressure to hold in tears. But the gender gap in pain goes far deeper than culture or upbringing. As recently reported by the American Pain Society, researchers are finding fundamental biological differences in the ways male and female bodies sense and respond to pain. Learning more about these differences can help shed light on the basic nature of pain and may lead to improved treatments for all patients.

Hormonal differences

Not surprisingly, hormones explain many gender differences in pain. The monthly ebb and flow of female hormones such as estrogen can clearly help fuel migraine headaches, a potentially disabling condition that is three times as common in women as in men. Women are especially vulnerable to migraines during their menstrual periods, when estrogen levels are low. Studies suggest that drops in estrogen can also interfere with the body’s ability to control pain. During menstruation, women produce only meager amounts of endorphins, the body’s natural pain relievers. When estrogen levels are high — near the time of ovulation — women can produce about as many endorphins as men, as reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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The brain also plays a role in the gender gap. In a small study of patients with irritable bowel syndrome, researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles have found that men and women use different parts of their brain to respond to pain. Scan results showed that women tend to turn on their limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. Men, in contrast, respond to pain with the cognitive or analytical part of their brain. Researchers speculate that these brain differences may reflect ancient gender roles. In the old days, women in pain often needed to protect and comfort their young, a highly emotional job. Meanwhile, injured men were more likely to attack the source of the trouble — with a spear, if necessary.

Unfortunately for women, an emotional response can make an already painful situation even worse. As reported by the American Pain Society, women are more likely than men to develop anxiety or depression along with their pain. Both anxiety and depression can sharpen feelings of pain while raising the risk of disability.

Men avoid pain treatment

Of course, the cool, calm approach often taken by men has its drawbacks, too. Men are less likely than women to take their pain seriously, according to the National Institutes of Health. Instead of getting treatment, men often just hope their pain will go away — at least for a while.

A study conducted over 36 months analyzing emergency room visits by more than 32,000 Baltimore men found that there was an increase in male visits immediately following televised sports events. The study, presented in October 2006 at the American College of Emergency Physicians conference, suggests that many men who visited the Baltimore VA Medical Center’s emergency room for various illnesses, including chest pain, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, and headaches chose to ignore their pain until they’d finished watching their football, baseball or basketball game.

As doctors learn more about gender differences in pain, both men and women should get more of the relief they need. There’s certainly room for improvement. Until attitudes change, women may have to be especially aggressive in getting the right treatment for their pain. Men and women may be wired differently, but in the end, relief should be gender-blind.

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12/21/2022
Why I Fear Doctors, Hospitals, and Test Results
Some people have an irrational fear of doctors. While some of us have been victimized so severely, that we may never trust one again.

Since my first chronic illness diagnosis in 2001, my life, has been nothing short of a nightmare.

I know my body well. In fact, I know better than any test or doctor. Tweet

Not to sound conceited. But not one test or scan has ever shown the destruction that has been taking place in my abdomen since 2003.

NOT ONE!!

However, my theories have been validated in surgery and each surgery was proved necessary.

Before you suggest that my fears aren’t warranted, I need for you to understand something.

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Just a Fear of Doctors or Medical PTSD

I do not have White Coat Syndrome, where patients experience a higher blood pressure reading when at the doctor’s office. My fear of doctors goes way beyond that.

My fears stem from incompetent care. Not from just one doctor or surgeon and I am talking double digits!!!

My medical PTSD is the result of being ignored, dismissed, having more than one surgeon make life-lasting errors, and many post-op errors that will haunt me for life.

In case that is not enough of an explanation, here is a list of some of the reasons I fear doctors, hospitals, and test results.

Test results are not perfect. In fact, they often, in my case that is, don’t show anything at all.
- Not one test ran in the emergency room indicated that my appendix was about to burst. I spent 7 hours crying from pain and being told that they can’t see a reason to give me more pain medication. It wasn’t until a shift change that the real problem was discovered. The new doctor pressed on my appendix, my body bounced off the table, and he said it’s her appendix. He then prepped me for surgery. My appendix could have burst inside had I not made it through a shift change.
- Not one scan showed the giant cyst that was pulling my uterus, left ovary and fallopian tube, and bladder to my sidewall. This too was discovered in surgery.
- Not one scan gave the surgeons I begged to help me after my hysterectomy a clue to the horror show that was taking place in my abdomen. A large, infected piece of my fallopian tube was never seen, nor were the adhesions that were strangling my bowels.
Sometimes they get mixed up or read incorrectly.

I experienced something that I thought would never happen to me prior to the second surgery performed to fix my botched hysterectomy.

The surgeon was reading my test results when he mentioned that my appendix looked fantastic. I stopped him and said that there was something wrong because I had my appendix removed 3 years earlier!!

His response? He argued with me!!!! He insisted that the report was read correctly and that it was mine!

Thankfully, I had already adopted the policy of never seeing a doctor alone. Had my husband not been there to witness this conversation, I probably would have had a mental breakdown.

One would think he would have checked to see if the results were correct or even mine. Instead, he questioned whether I really had an appendectomy….. I told him he could call the hospital where it took place if he had any more questions.

Later after surgery, I asked the attending surgeon if he saw an appendix. He said NO! The validation joy didn’t last long. I soon began dealing with the fallout from the errors he made during surgery.

Surgical Errors That Furthered My Fear of Doctors

Think surgical errors aren’t common? Well, they appear to be with me!

Apparently, there is only one surgeon in Arizona and one in California who not only knows about but knows where to find the only sutures that I am either not allergic to or that are compatible with my body. Why? Because no matter how much detail I go into when explaining the type of sutures they need to use, I have had an issue with the sutures and my healing all because they chose not to listen to me or take me seriously.

My incisions became infected from staples and traditional sutures. The ones that look like regular sutures but are supposed to dissolve on their own don’t dissolve with my body’s makeup.

A surgeon was in a hurry one Friday afternoon and didn’t take the time to sew me up properly.

Even after I protested and screamed that something was wrong, (blood has never poured out of my incisions in the past) I was told that it was normal and sent home. Mind you, the nurses who told me this was normal refused to look under my gown to see what I was referring to.

The next day I called the hospital who told me no that it wasn’t normal and to get back there asap.

When I did, they discovered that he left a gaping hole where he had cut into my belly button. I have seen three-year-olds do a better job of sewing!!

And if That Wasn’t Enough to Justify My Fear of Doctors….

The doctor who performed my hysterectomy left behind a huge portion of my fallopian tube and pieces of my ovaries.

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It took two years for me to get a surgeon to listen to me.

I was told repeatedly that it wasn’t an OBGYN problem since I had the hysterectomy.

Some refused to look past my chronic illnesses on my chart. While others told me that I needed to see a psychiatrist. But the pain wasn’t in my head, it was real.

Finally, when surgeon number 21 agreed to go in and later shared his findings, I could finally breathe. I wasn’t crazy after all.

During the second surgery to address the errors of the hysterectomy, my surgeon severed a set of nerves between my vagina and left leg.

Later one of the top neurologists in Scottsdale, Arizona informed me that there are two sets of nerves in that area. One that is commonly nicked or severed and that had been researched and there were ways to fix it. The other is a set that is so rarely severed or nicked that there was no research on how to fix it.

Can you guess which one my surgeon severed? That is right! I have permanent nerve damage.

The sad part is that every single one of those surgeons is still practicing and has never been reprimanded by the state that the errors took place in. Why? Because my lawyers and the state attorneys were unable to find a peer to testify against them.

Poor Treatment Contributed to My Fear of Doctors

When I woke up from surgery without feeling in my left thigh, I quickly called over the recovery room nurse.

She said that it was normal considering that I had just had back surgery. Except that I didn’t have back surgery and there was nothing normal about my numb thigh or the blood pouring out of my belly.

This took place at a world-renown hospital in Arizona, the last place you’d ever expect to be treated so poorly, but yet it happened to me.

The recovery room staff refused to allow my husband into the recovery area, even though everyone else had someone with them.

My husband had my glasses, so I was blind, but I also couldn’t walk because of the nerve damage and was weak from losing more blood, otherwise, I would have left on my own.

I have had doctors scoff at my allergy list. One actually laughed out loud, that is until he ordered a liquid for me to consume before a test he was running and I had an allergic reaction in front of him after one sip.

Others just ignore my list, leaving it up to me to go through the ingredient list to make sure it doesn’t contain one of my allergens.

Nine times out of ten my prescriptions would have killed me had I not done the research.

All we can do

Living with incurable chronic illnesses means often hearing the words, this is all we can do or there isn’t anything else we can do.

But that doesn’t make it easier knowing that there is only so much that can be done.

However, all we can do or we are going to blame it on one of your chronic conditions don’t cut it when vital organs are being attacked.

What’s really sad is that I am only taken seriously when I have been in a car or other type of accident. Anything that could remotely be blamed on fibromyalgia, psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis, etc. is…….

This is Just a Few Examples of Why I Fear Doctors

I could seriously fill a book about how terribly I have been treated by the medical profession.

With just what I shared in this post, are you able to understand why I am so fearful?

Do you see why I do not run to them until I am sure they cannot blame it on something else?

Can you understand why knowing I need to see someone ASAP for my latest bout of abdominal pain fills me with anxiety?

In 2016 I was told by a handful of surgeons that they agreed that adhesions were attacking my bowels. But each and everyone one of them refused to fight for me after their request to schedule surgery was denied by the head of my HMO’s gynecology and GI department. Their reasoning? The adhesions will return…..

Yes, they will return, but I won’t… especially if they are permitted to destroy what is left inside of me. On the other hand, I also fear that a surgeon will make a fatal error.

I got lucky and was able to find temporary relief outside of normal healthcare practices after being completely shut down in 2016. I just pray that I can get lucky one more time…

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12/05/2022
Invisible Disability Awareness

We have embodied beings. All of us. But what then is distinct about the lived experience of pain? What is it like to have your life and choices filtered by pain, limited by pain, and yet be invisible to others? I will tell you what it is like. It sucks.

Yes, it sucks. There I said it. Like so many others with invisible disabilities I have danced, no, shuffled through life with this awesome mask of well-being on. This carefully constructed façade I wear so that I do not exhibit any of the pain behaviors that would make others know I am in fact in pain. There are so very many reasons why we create these masks. First of all, to look like I am suffering all the time, while accurate, makes other people uncomfortable and eventually doubtful. It makes me feel like I am a chronic complainer or whiner. It does not help and in fact, hinders my ability to function without it. It helps me repress that core emotional anguish we carry in us that we have to endure such things.

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Masks crack sometimes and the pain shines through. Is it fair that we must endure such suffering while trying to work just to make other people comfortable? No. It sucks. The very fact that we feel compelled to mask our pain and try to live the life society and our families would like us to is ludicrous since we merely compound our own suffering to put others at ease. Are we not invisible enough without compounding it with our silence?

So I say it stops now. Say I am in pain and it sucks. Shout it out! ’We are in pain and we won’t stand for it anymore. Set up a protest at your doctor’s office and pelt doctors with empty prescription bottles. We will not be invisible. It is not our job to make others feel comfortable around our suffering, not when the world demands so much from us, thus not letting us at least minimize our pain. The definition of invisible is not non-existent. Non-existence means does not hold the trait of existence within and does not exist abstractly or concretely in the universe. Invisible simply means cannot be perceived visually. I thought that would be rather self-explanatory.

If you suffer from chronic pain I beg you to show it. To speak of it. Do not make yourself worse in order to ‘pass’ as normal. It never works. You cannot have ambition like others. You cannot set long-term goals like others. You cannot be a model employee, raise your family, and care for your home like others. Your whole existence is defined by the limitations and lived experience of pain. Own it, don’t let it own you.

I talk the talk, but I do not always walk the walk. I feel genuine outrage though that those of us with chronic pain, and invisible disabilities, are forced to suffer in silence. Does it really come as a surprise that depression is always ‘co-morbid’ with these conditions? A person would have to be mad, or a masochist, to endure such pain day after day, with little to no relief for an indeterminate amount of time, and be all cool with it. We are talking about pain that does not have an end date. Where pain is the status quo. Not pain that comes and goes, like a twinge in the old tennis elbow when it rains or a broken leg that can be healed.

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Humans have an amazing capacity, with the right medication, to handle extreme pain for short durations. However, try mild to severe pain forever, without all the nice drugs, and see how that works for you. Not so fun then is it? Okay, pain is not fun no matter what, unless you are a masochist. I wish I were a masochist. Point is, that chronic pain is a form of torture and everybody breaks from torture eventually. I rather think we are entitled to a pity party once in a while. Rant and rave a few times a year. Maybe publicly shed a tear or two.

So let us explore all the various facets of the chronic pain existence through personal experience, humor, slices of real life, and some facts thrown in there just for fun. This is not to explain what certain conditions are… you can google that like everyone else. This is to delve into what it is like to be in chronic pain, to live in a pained body, and what an Invisible Disability really means. And this is the time to Blog our butts off because this is Invisibility Awareness time.

I have Fibromyalgia which is an Invisible disability because it involves chronic pain and symptoms that do not cripple or otherwise show themselves physically. Secondly, I have chronic migraines which drastically affect all aspects of my life but again are all about pain, which is subjective and therefore can be doubted by the outside observer. Because Fibromyalgia has in the recent past been doubted by doctors I have learned to minimize its effects on me because doctors were completely unwilling to help with it and I always got the impression they thought I was simply being dramatic if I dared to complain about my suffering. This habit has carried forward in my life and I do the same with chronic migraines. What I learned about suffering in silence was that it leads to frustration and isolation. Ironically what I learned from trying to fight for my rights as a person with a disability, and failing, was that it is really easy to try and kill yourself. And that there is a frequent concern for those of us with Invisible disabilities… risk of suicide. That is why spreading awareness of the cost of chronic pain is vital.

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10/14/2022
A new principle was discovered for how muscle pain is signaled

Chronic muscular pain may be linked to a previously unknown principle for how pain signals are transmitted in the human body.

This is shown by Umeå University researchers Tuija Athanassiadis and Karl-Gunnar Westberg, in collaboration with Canadian associates, in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.

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Muscles have sensory organs called muscle spindles. Their task is to inform the brain of changes in muscle length. Muscle spindles, therefore, contain a special type of large diameter nerve filaments that signal stretch of the muscle.

The Umeå scientists’ studies show that muscle spindles also contain fine nerve filaments with pain receptors. When a muscle is damaged as a result of overloading, these pain receptors are activated by the release of a signal substance from the neighboring stretch-sensitive nerve filaments in the muscle spindle.

It was previously believed that the pain receptors in muscles were exclusively found in the membranes that surround the muscles or in connection with the blood vessels in the muscle. With these new findings, the Umeå researchers are drawing attention to a hitherto unknown and interesting mechanism. Damage to the stretch-sensitive nerve filaments of the muscle spindle may contribute to and sustain chronic pain in jaw muscles as well as in other muscles.

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09/11/2022
Immediate treatment can alleviate future back problems

Immediate treatment by a physiotherapist, bypassing a waiting list, can reduce problems with recurring low back pain, reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Many people suffer from low back pain, and most get better. However, those who suffer from long-term pain can find that their work, everyday, and leisure activities are limited to varying degrees. Given that long-term pain often requires extensive treatment, it is important that the pain be treated at an early stage.

“I wanted to find out whether patients‘ low back pain could be alleviated in the long run if primary care clinics could offer examinations and treatment by a physiotherapist without any delay in the form of a doctor’s referral or waiting list,” says Lena Nordeman, a registered physiotherapist, and researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

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As part of her thesis, she, therefore, carried out a study in a same-day appointment model with the option of going straight to a physiotherapist, with or without a referral from a doctor. The effect of receiving an examination and treatment within 48 hours was subsequently evaluated compared to being on a waiting list for four weeks before receiving the same treatment.

60 patients with low back pain for 3-12 weeks took part in the study, which was carried out in primary health care in Södra Älvsborg, south-west Sweden.

“We saw that both groups improved after the treatment ended. The group that had been given early access to an examination and individualized treatment maintained their improvement after six months, while the group that had been held on a waiting list were more likely to suffer from recurring back pain,” says Nordeman, who draws the conclusion that early examination and treatment by a physiotherapist as soon as a patient asks for care could be important for reducing low back pain in the long term.

Her thesis also included an investigation of 130 women who had suffered from low back pain for more than three months and who among others had undertaken a walk test. A follow-up after two years revealed that the walk test was a good predictor of both future ability to work and limitations in everyday activities.

It is recommended that patients with long-term widespread pain or fibromyalgia be given education and a physical exercise program to help alleviate their symptoms. Nordeman’s thesis also looked at which patients benefit most from this treatment. 166 patients with widespread pain or fibromyalgia from Gothenburg, Uddevalla, and Alingsås were randomly divided into two groups, the first of which was given a six-session education program and 20-week pool exercise program supervised by a physiotherapist, while the second was given just the education program.

“We saw that the group that received both the education and the physical exercise program showed the greatest improvement in perceived health and that patients with moderate symptoms benefitted most from exercise,” says Nordeman.

Low back pain

Low back pain affects up to 80% of people of working age at some time in their lives, though most will recover. Low back pain can be recurring, and some people will continue to suffer from some degree of pain. In 85-90% of cases, the pain cannot be attributed to a specific illness or injury.

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09/06/2022