What pain!! Media story

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What a Pain!

- Leiter <http://www.jewishexponent.com/ViewArticle.asp?ArtID=2634#>

Ever since I was injured in a serious car accident several years ago, I have

devoured literature on illness and pain. I cannot, for obvious reasons, get

enough of it, and am always looking for new examples of this genre, if such

a literary category actually exists. I've been searching, I've realized, for

that one novel or article or poem that will provide me with the answer to

why we're periodically forced to suffer significant pain (or, in some

terrible circumstances, suffer it chronically). The reason cannot only be

that, when our health improves, we must be relieved over our good fortune.

That's part of it, of course, but I'm certain only a small part.

Because of this almost unconscious quest, I keep my eyes peeled for any new

literary specimens.

Somehow, however, I missed an article by writer-physician Jerome Groopman

that appeared in the Oct. 10 New Yorker. Luckily, a friend, knowing of my

predilections, recently sent me a copy. Titled " When Pain Remains, " it deals

with patients who suffer from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, or RSD, and the

doctors who are trying to relieve their severe and persistent distress.

Groopman begins by noting that we have all at one time or another stubbed a

toe or skinned a knee. The pain may be severe at the time, but more often,

it's fleeting. Yet in some people, it seems, the pain can continue for

months, even years, and be debilitating.

He then tells the story of " Barbara, " and the fall she took and the pain she

suffered.

About a year ago, Groopman noted, she was taking a leisurely stroll in

Manhattan when her foot caught the curb as she was crossing a street, and

she fell face down on the pavement. A jogger helped her up, and she managed

to hobble the several blocks to her apartment.

" Her left knee was bright red and extremely sore. Over the next few days, it

turned black-and-blue, and the pain did not subside. Instead of the dull

discomfort typical of a bruise, Barbara felt as though she had a 'violent

toothache' in her knee. She cut holes in her sheets to prevent them from

touching the skin around the injury. Even the breeze over her knee from the

air-conditioner was excruciating.

" Barbara is in her early 60s, a trim, poised woman, who grew up in

California riding horses and swimming in the ocean. In New York, she played

tennis and worked out at the gym. But two weeks after her accident she still

could not bend or straighten her left leg without intolerable pain. Unable

to sleep, she spent hours each night leaning over a counter in the kitchen,

shifting her weight from one foot to the other, or slumped on a sofa in the

living room, gingerly holding her injured knee in front of her chest. "

Then began the round of doctors who told her there was no fracture and

simply to be patient. She was, but it didn't get better, and she became

something of a drug freak. Finally, a physical therapist told her she had

RSD. But that was just the beginning of a saga that's had no real end and

few, if any, answers.