Pain: some myths


        PAIN: SOME MYTHS
You'll just have to learn to live with it
In many cases pain can be largely modified or reduced substantially. In some, coping skills can markedly help the person experiencing pain to get on with their lives. To simply tell a pain sufferer that they must learn to live with their pain and not support them is unforgiveable.
Make yourself feel better by just looking at someone worse off This implies that some comfort will be taken by the patient in pain by observing another's misery. This is unlikely to help when your world is totally taken up by your own pain experience.
Medical science can cure anything
Even in the early 1990's medicine is a long way from having all of the answers. We still have a long to go before we can totally understand and therefore control the pain of reflex sympathetic dystrophy or post-herpetic neuralgia to name but two of the most difficult of the chronic pain conditions to treat.
I won't have to live with this for the rest of my life
In some circumstances a lifetime of pain is exactly what may have to be coped with. However, many of the management approaches described in this book can go a long way to helping those unfortunate to be in this position to cope.
My pain is my own
To some extent this, is true. However there are now many doctors and their professional colleagues who have taken a special interest in patients with chronic pain. Also much can be learned from fellow pain sufferers.
The doctors don't give a damn
This a misconception that is simply an incorrect generalisation. As later revealed in this book many doctors simply do not have the skills or the knowledge to help you if you have chronic pain. Hopefully the new explosion of information on chronic pain which has taken place in the last ten years will correct this problem.
All I need is more powerful medicine to get some relief One of the most important principles to be stated in pain management is that analgesics or pain-killers have a very limited role to play in the management of chronic pain and are in themselves the cause of much of the problems seen in pain clinics. One of pain management's most important shortcomings is the lack of communication of information between pain professionals themselves and with patients experiencing chronic pain. The perceived need for more understandable information about chronic pain, both for patient and professional alike, lead to this book being written.
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Pain

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