Voices of pain patients

http://www.pharmaciststeve.com/?p=9313

Google search for:  “Chronic Pain Patients of America”:  4 results

http://www.topix.com/forum/health/T8DT2APRSTHQM42UN

https://www.tumblr.com/search/your%20not%20alone%20together%20we%20stand

https://www.tumblr.com/search/dear%20sir%20or%20madam

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/whats-a-doctor-to-do/?_r=0

C.M.Phillips June 15, 2007 · 9:05 am:  …For the MILLIONS of people out there left under-treated or completely untreated, just trying to get through the day is hard enough but having to fight a seemingly endless battle for pain treatment is practically impossible. I have sent in SO many letters to congress, my state reps., my governor, the pres, news stations…everywhere, WITHOUT EVEN ONE RESPONSE FROM ANYONE!…

Pain patient June 21, 2007 · 3:40 pm:  THE CHRONIC PAIN EXPERIENCE. Chronic pain destroys our normal assumptions about the world. It never releases us from its grip and continually frustrates our hopes for gradual improvement. Ultimately it introduces us to an unsettling counterworld where, as Emily Dickinson described it, time has stopped. (The time before pain is almost inconceivable, or else recedes in memory like a faded dream) It is a place where, gradually, almost without noticing, you find yourself at last all alone. Chronic pain penetrates so completely that it leaves no escape. It lives within us like an unimaginably dull nightmare.

Nightmare is not simply a figure of speech when applied to chronic pain. Lawrence LeShan, from the Institute of Applied Biology, described the universe perceived by the patient in chronic pain as structurally identical with the universe of the nightmare…