Pain Chronicles
Every once in a while I read a book that's a game changer--one that has the potential of intervening in the culture, shifting our understanding of a difficult problem and enabling a real conversation to happen when the invested parties are at an impasse.
The Pain Chronicles, by Melanie Thernstrom, is one of these books. She's suffered from chronic pain for over 15 years and spent 8 years studying pain clinics, pain doctors, sufferers of chronic pain and all of the clinical, historical and cultural information she could find. This book doesn't offer a cure or an easy answer, but might help us get the information so we can have the conversations that we need to have so people will be able to take advantage of what is out there that can be helpful while we search for more effective treatments.
Anyone who's worked in health care, has suffered from chronic pain or has loved ones who are affected by it knows that we are doing a terrible job with a problem that affects millions of people. Many people don't even have access to treatments that might help them--in part because of insurance issues but also due to lack of physician understanding of different types of pain and of different responses to treatment and because the lag time between gains in knowledge to changes in practice.
Last night we hosted her and the audience included people suffering from pain, their loved ones, physicians and members of the general public. Great discussion afterward. If you care about the issue, I urge you to check out the book. Link below to her website.
MThernstromOnPain
The Pain Chronicles, by Melanie Thernstrom, is one of these books. She's suffered from chronic pain for over 15 years and spent 8 years studying pain clinics, pain doctors, sufferers of chronic pain and all of the clinical, historical and cultural information she could find. This book doesn't offer a cure or an easy answer, but might help us get the information so we can have the conversations that we need to have so people will be able to take advantage of what is out there that can be helpful while we search for more effective treatments.
Anyone who's worked in health care, has suffered from chronic pain or has loved ones who are affected by it knows that we are doing a terrible job with a problem that affects millions of people. Many people don't even have access to treatments that might help them--in part because of insurance issues but also due to lack of physician understanding of different types of pain and of different responses to treatment and because the lag time between gains in knowledge to changes in practice.
Last night we hosted her and the audience included people suffering from pain, their loved ones, physicians and members of the general public. Great discussion afterward. If you care about the issue, I urge you to check out the book. Link below to her website.
MThernstromOnPain