Living with pain

Another great bit from the UCLA online exhibit (and apologies to my readers whom this bores --as you well know, until fame, I use this blog to record tidbits that interest me for further use).

Since 1973, the multidisciplinary pain clinic has come into its own. Many clinics now offer a variety of therapeutic approaches to effective pain management, including physical therapy, acupuncture, TENS (transcutaneous electronic nerve stimulation), hypnosis, and behavioral modification based on the methods pioneered by Bonica's colleague, Wilbert Fordyce. However, not all patients have access to good pain clinics and, in the US, many pain therapies are not covered by insurance.

Richard Sternbach, of the Pain Treatment Center at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, offered 7 steps on how to live despite pain in his 1977 pamphlet (How Can I Learn to Live With Pain When It Hurts So Much?, revised in 1983):

1. Accept the fact of your pain
2. Set specific goals of work, hobbies and social acitivities towards which you will work
3. Let yourself get angry at your pain if it seems to be getting the best of you
4. Pace your activities
* Get in shape, and keep fit
* Learn to relax, and practice it
5. Time your medications, then taper off them
6. Have family and friends support only your healthy behavior, not your invalidism
7. Be open and reasonable with your doctor