Sufferers say it is possible to find meaning in chronic pain

[Guest guest]

Palo Alto Online

Publication Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2001

Putting pain to work

Sufferers say it is possible to find meaning in chronic pain

by Reynolds Roome

Finding meaning in pain may be the last thing someone who is suffering

wants to do. First on the agenda is making the agony -- whether physical

or emotional -- stop.

But for some people who are in chronic physical pain, finding meaning in

the experience may be one of the few positive options available to them.

" If pain is going on, you might as well put it to work, " said Beto

Telleria, founder and director of For Those in Pain Inc., a Mountain

View non-profit that offers counseling and free classes in pain

management at Palo Alto Medical Clinic and other locations around the

Bay Area. " You have a choice -- to muddle through in your mind, or to

use the mind, so that you can view pain from a different vantage point.

Suffering without meaning is the worst suffering of all. " Chronic pain

afflicts 20 percent of the population in the United States, despite

advances in pain-management practices over the past decade. The struggle

to overcome loss and despair zaps so much of a person's energy, there's

little left over for living, experts say. " Terrible, unrelenting pain

can be destructive -- there are people whose spirits get drowned out by

it, " said Ernle Young, Ph.D., co-director of the Stanford

Center for Biomedical Ethics. Young has seen the effects of pain in

almost all its forms over nearly three decades of work at Stanford

University Medical Center, first as chaplain and then as clinical ethics

consultant at Stanford and elsewhere. But, Young and other experts say,

there can be silver linings to pain: greater compassion for others and a

desire to forge something good from something bad. " Those who have

suffered or experienced pain typically emerge with a greater empathy for

the pains that others are bearing, " Young said. " That is probably the

most precious thing that comes out of this experience -- that deepened

compassion. " Sometimes this empathy blossoms into something

extraordinary. Weiner, Ph.D., who lives in Palo Alto, was

rear-ended by a drunk driver 23 years ago. He suffered severe low-back

injuries and chronic pain that led him on a " cosmic search " for relief,

taking him from doctor to doctor. While sitting in waiting rooms, he

listened to other pain patients. Weiner already had an M.A. in

counseling, and was working on a doctorate on urban planning. But his

quest to end his own pain slowly transmuted into a deepening concern for

other peoples,' and this profoundly changed his focus. He ended up

writing one of the first Ph.D. dissertations in modern pain management.

Then he began lecturing, and eventually opened up a pain clinic in

Modesto. This led to the foundation of the American Academy of Pain

Management, an organization that now has 3,000 accredited members in the

medical and associated health professions. Now Weiner is being put

through the most challenging test of his life. Diagnosed last month with

pancreatic cancer, he is receiving intensive treatment at Stanford.

" It's a devastating, terrible condition, " said Weiner. Yet while

suffering constant pain and fatigue, which make it difficult to sit,

walk and sleep, he is still working from the Palo Alto apartment where

he currently stays. " I look at it as a challenge, and every day in

treatment I learn lessons. This will be a new path for me [in my work],

so I see a future, which makes every day meaningful. It's a blessing in

an odd, weird way. " It is people's ability to overcome difficult

situations that has inspired Young. " One of the things that's kept me go

ing has been ... seeing the heights to which the spirit can rise in the

most desperate circumstances. That has been like a beacon of light to

me, and renews my hope in the whole enterprise of being human. " Letting

go of negativity, Young added, is where the greatest work has to happen.

" Most humans find they've got to move on to something more positive,

however hard it is initially. What can be salvaged now -- that is the

reality, " Young said. Pat Dietrich, a Palo Alto nurse and office

manager, has experienced all kinds of pain due to osteoarthritis and

fibromyalgia. " It was a long, slow process of acceptance, " said

Dietrich, who has had widespread musculoskeletal pain, tender joints, a

collapsed tendon, knee surgery and, most recently, hand surgery. When

asthma added another level of complication to her life, Dietrich said,

" I realized I couldn't let this control me, so I'd better look for ways

to deal with it. " It was far from easy, but through reading, listening,

learning, hypnotherapy, and remembering that there are others in a worse

situation than herself, Dietrich reached a place where she can control

and accept the pain enough to volunteer for Lifeline, a Stanford-based

telephone help line. " Helping people helps me, " she said. " I thrive on

this. But as for finding meaning in pain, I would just as soon grab it

and throw it out! " " I wouldn't ask for this disease, " said Weiner. " But

I have it, so I can learn from it and try to have dignity. So many

people are inadequately educated and treated for pain, and what I hear

now is the silent scream of others. We all die, but it's how we live and

how we die that matters. " Contact For Those In Pain, Inc. at

www.forthoseinpain.org

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Copyright © 2001 Embarcadero Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Reproduction or online links to anything other than the home page

without permission is strictly prohibited.