It’s important for anyone who receives an unhappy diagnosis to realize that although the phrase ”terminal illness” isn’t exactly a mood-enhancer, it also doesn’t necessarily signal a future of bad pain. Pancreatic cancer patients, for example, often experience no pain.
But for those of you who are experiencing pain — or are friends or relatives of those who may be in pain — it’s equally vital to know that it can be managed. And by “managed” (a classic hospice word which always drives me nuts), I mean bad pain can almost certainly be relieved. Almost 90 percent of all patients will find this to be true.
So that’s a big, rousing, heartening number. In which case, you might be asking yourself, ‘Why can’t my pain be relieved?’“
And the answer is, almost always, because your doctor or nurse either doesn’t know how to do it; or because they refuse to do it.
Why do so many medical professionals fail to provide adequate pain medication? Because — and I know this might make you cringe — they still believe, all evidence to the contrary, that somehow or other the very sick will get addicted to the drugs. Or they simply don’t know much about the best meds: methodone (which treats more kinds of pain than any other narcotic) and morphine among them. Or they don’t provide enough of the medication to make a difference.
If you happen to be going to a clueless medical professional, change doctors at once. And always remember: not long ago a doctor in California who provided inadequate pain relief to a patient dying of lung cancer, was sued so successfully by that patient’s family that California now mandates that physicians take pain management education courses. A reference to that landmark case might alter your physician’s notions about how to treat your symptoms.
Above all, try hospice care. Hospice professionals seem to know and care a lot more about pain than most others.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!