Living with Chronic Pain

Doctors and surgeons generally spend most of their professional lives trying to decrease pain and the causes of pain, along with the usual overall misery and suffering pain can bring. Chronic pain in particular is a tough one to manage, particularly if all other medical and surgical treatments have been tried. 

Helping patients with chronic pain requires a team of experts to help all aspects of the patient’s body and soul: doctors, surgeons, pain specialists, psychiatrists, the patient’s family, people of faith if the patient is open to that, fitness trainers, dieticians as well can help. 


Often patients really just want a pill that will cure them, but there is no magic bullet. This is frustrating to patients and their physicians and family as well. It takes time and patience. 


Below is a pretty good way to think about chronic pain in general.


It is good to have an overall perspective of how to live with Chronic Pain. 


I would add to the Pain Tool Kit the roll of Faith and Diet which can be related. Intermittent fasting has been used by for years to decrease inflammation, pain, and chronic illnesses. 


Diet changes, such as going gluten-free, sugar-free, elimination diets, intermittent fasting, longer-term fasting, and all of the above. 


Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Many patients have faith in me as a surgeon to help them even before they can see the results of treatment. Yet even more faith and trust is needed in God, who loves and wants the best for each of us more than we can ever comprehend. For more on what Dr. Cremers things about Faith, skip to below **.




https://www.paintoolkit.org/pain-tools

1. Acceptance

Accept that you have persistent pain and then begin to move on. Acceptance is the first and the most important tool in your pain self management toolkit.

What Pete says

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2. Get involved

Get involved, start building a support team. Being successful in pain self management means getting both help and support from others.

What Pete says

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3. Pacing

Learn to pace yourself. Pacing daily activities is one of the key tools to self managing your pain.

What Pete says

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4. Prioritising

Learn to prioritise and plan out your days. Prioritising and planning your days is an essential tool.

What Pete says

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5. Setting Goals

Setting goals and action plans. For example, Tuesday PM – you could write an activity plan for the following day.

What Pete says

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6. Be Patient

Be patient with yourself. Take things steadily. It may take you a few weeks or months to see changes or improvements.

What Pete says

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7. Relaxation

Learn relaxation skills. Relaxation skills are very important for tense muscles in the body and for unwinding the mind.

What Pete says

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8. Exercising

Keeping fit and healthy. Many people with pain fear exercise in case it causes more problems. However this is not true.

What Pete says

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9. Track Progress

It is always handy to note what hasn’t or didn’t work so you can learn from those experiences. We sometimes learn more from our errors and not from our successes.

What Pete says

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It is hard for all of us to truly trust in God who we technically cannot “see.” Many do not believe in God because they cannot “see Him.”As a Catholic, I believe I get to “see Him” at daily mass in the Eucharist, but this requires the gift of faith. A dear friend of mine Roy Schoeman says that to receive that gift of faith, all you need to do is say aloud, “God give me the gift of Your faith so I can see and believe in You.”
  

“Why do we need to say that out loud,” I asked Roy,”doesn’t God know we want all gifts?” Roy said, “God values our free will so much that He will not go against our will. We have to ask.” 

With the eyes of faith, we can start to trust that everything that happens to us, even Chronic Pain, is for our good and the good of those that love God. Very few in the history of the world have been able to see pain and chronic pain, as a gift allowed by God to help us see the beauty of eternal life (ie, this world and this current pain & suffering we are in is often temporary). 


Those few people are often called saints which we are all called to be. Still it is hard to accept chronic pain. Of course, we do everything we can to relieve pain and suffering. Yet all doctors, especially pain management doctors, know there are some patients where it is very hard to control pain and we have to be able to show them there is redemptive value in suffering. 

We all have pain and suffering at times. Sometimes it is physical. Sometimes it is emotions, spiritual. 

When all else fails to help with pain, I recommend the following:

1. Pray and keep praying. Do not give up hope. 

2. Think of the positive. There is always someone in the world with more pain than you. 

3. Get help. From family, friends, religious friends, your pastor, priest, rabbi. Ask them to pray for you. 

4. Be sure to avoid all inflammatory-causing foods like gluten, sugar, dairy. Try fasting. It is amazing how stomach grumblings can take away pain from other parts of the body.

5. Exercise: check with your MD always but get out there and stretch your muscles: again it is amazing how pain in muscles will take away pain in other parts of body. Don’t overdue it but talk to your MD or trainer about an exercise plan. 

6. A favorite of mine is to listen or watch the lives of the saints. They all suffered greatly. Some were declared dead and came back to life. Some were tortured and persecuted. Some had their eyes ripped out. They were real people and the way the handled their reversals were heroic. I pray I too would be heroic in such trials. 

This is my favorite go to site to watch or listen to the lives of the saints:

a. https://formed.org/

b. for kids: https://www.holyheroes.com/

c.This book below, for some reason, snaps me out of any depression, sadness, self-pity faster than anything else: it is a classic. It will scare the Hell out of you. 

d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq9D_VzODWY

3. 
This is also a favorite book as well. Reading it for the 3rd time now.