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> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/magazine/16PAIN.html?

ex=1009542904 & ei=1 & en

> =0

>

Is this not a facinating article!!! I thought it was perculiar that

my LLMD wanted me to continue taking Prozac....now I see why.

This would be a really good article to have on hand somewhere to

attatch to a dissability application.

Really makes sense to me with my fibro. pain and feet peripheral

neuropathy.

DD

> December 16, 2001

> Pain, the Disease

> By MELANIE THERNSTROM

>

> A modern chronicler of hell might look to the lives of chronic-pain

patients

> for inspiration. Theirs is a special suffering, a separate chamber,

the

> dimensions of which materialize at the New England Medical Center

pain

> clinic in downtown Boston. Inside the cement tower, all sights and

sounds of

> the neighborhood -- the swans in the Public Garden, the lanterns of

> Chinatown -- disappear, collapsing into a small examining room in

which

> there are only three things: the doctor, the patient and pain. Of

these, as

> the endless daily parade of desperation and diagnoses makes

evident, it is

> pain whose presence predominates.

>

> ''Yes, yes,'' sighs Dr. Carr, who is the clinic's medical

director.

> ''Some of my patients are on the border of human life. Chronic pain

is like

> water damage to a house -- if it goes on long enough, the house

collapses.

> By the time most patients make their way to a pain clinic, it's

very late.''

> What the majority of doctors see in a chronic-pain patient is an

> overwhelming, off-putting ruin: a ruined body and a ruined life. It

is

> Carr's job to rescue the crushed person within, to locate the

original

> source of pain -- the leak, the structural instability -- and begin

to

> rebuild: psychically, psychologically, socially.

>

> For leaders in the field like Carr, this year marks a critical

watershed. In

> January, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare

Organizations,

> the basic national health care review board, implemented the first

national

> standards requiring pain assessment and control in all hospitals

and nursing

> homes. Standards for evaluating and managing pain in lab animals

have long

> been tightly regulated, but curiously there had never before been

any legal

> equivalent for people. Maine took the further step last year of

passing its

> own legislation requiring the aggressive treatment of pain, and

California

> and other states are considering following suit.

>

> ''It's a field on the verge of an explosion,'' Carr says. ''There's

no area

> of medicine with more growth and more public interest. We've come

far enough

> scientifically to see how far we have to go.''

>

> Chronic pain -- continuous pain lasting longer than six months --

afflicts

> an estimated 30 million to 50 million Americans, with social costs

in

> disability and lost productivity adding up to more than $100 billion

> annually. However, only in recent years has it become a focus of

research.

> There used to be no pain specialists because pain had always been

understood

> as a symptom of underlying disease: treat the disease and the pain

should

> take care of itself. Thus, specializing in pain made no more sense

than

> specializing in fever. Yet the actual experience of patients

frequently

> belied this assumption, for chronic pain often outlives its

original causes,

> worsens over time and appears to take on a puzzling life of its own.

>

> Research has begun to shed light on this: unlike ordinary or acute

pain,

> which is a function of a healthy nervous system, chronic pain

resembles a

> disease, a pathology of the nervous system that produces abnormal

changes in

> the brain and spinal cord. New technology, like functional imaging,

which is

> generating the first portraits of brains in action, is revealing

the nature

> of pain's pathology.

>

> Far from being simply an unpleasant experience that people should

endure

> with a stiff upper lip, pain turns out to be harmful to the body.

Pain

> unleashes a cascade of negative hormones like cortisol that

adversely affect

> the immune system and kidney function. Patients treated with

morphine heal

> more quickly after surgery. A recent study suggests that adequate

> cancer-pain treatment may influence the prospects for survival:

rats with

> tumors given morphine actually live longer than those that do not

receive

> it.

>

>

> Paradigm shifts occur slowly; if arriving at a new medical

conception of

> pain has been difficult and protracted, disseminating the knowledge

will be

> more so. Pain treatment belongs primarily in the hands of ordinary

> physicians, most of whom know little about it. Less than 1 percent

of them

> have been trained as pain specialists, and medical schools and

textbooks

> give the subject very little attention. The primary painkillers --

opiates,

> like OxyContin -- are widely feared, misunderstood and underused.

(A 1998

> study of elderly women in nursing homes with metastatic breast

cancer found

> that only a quarter received adequate pain treatment; one-quarter

received

> no treatment at all.)

>

> While the undertreatment of pain has led to lawsuits -- recently, a

> California court issued a judgment against a Bay Area internist for

> undertreating a terminally ill patient's cancer pain -- so has the

> overprescribing of OxyContin in cases of patient abuse. It takes

only a few

> lawsuits -- along with the threat of Drug Enforcement Administration

> oversight and regulation -- to exert a chilling effect on

prescribing

> practices. ''Doctors feel damned if they do and damned if they

don't,'' says

> Dr. Fishman, chief of the division of pain medicine at the

University

> of California at Medical Center. ''The enormous confusion

about pain

> has led to the hysteria around opiates.''

>

> Dr. Mickle, a family doctor in rural Pennsylvania, describes

the

> leeriness most physicians feel about treating pain: ''Is it

objective or

> subjective? How do you know you're not being tricked or taken

advantage of

> to get narcotics? And chronic-pain patients are, generally, well --

a pain.

> Most doctors' reaction to a patient with chronic pain is to try to

pass them

> off to someone who's sympathetic.''

>

> And what makes a doctor sympathetic to pain?

>

> ''Someone who has pain himself,'' Mickle says. ''Or has an

intellectual

> interest -- who isn't interested in immediate results, doesn't want

to make

> money, has a lot of degrees. There's one in a lot of communities,

but then

> they get all the pain patients sent to them and eventually they

burn out and

> quit.''

>

>

> Carr's interest in pain began as an intellectual one. After

training

> as an internist and endocrinologist, he published a landmark study

in 1981

> of runners, which showed that exercise stimulates beta-endorphin

production,

> leading to a ''runner's high'' that temporarily anesthetizes the

runner. He

> began to wonder: if the runner's high is an example of how a

healthy body

> successfully modulates pain, what abnormality leads to chronic

pain? He did

> a third residency in anesthesia and pain medicine, became a founder

of the

> multidisciplinary pain clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital and

a

> director of the American Pain Society. Six years ago, he moved to

Tufts and

> set up a pain clinic (which loses money) and created the country's

first

> master's program in pain for health professionals.

>

> Every pain patient is a testament to the dangers of the conservative

> wait-it-out approach to pain, as a day spent in Carr's clinic

demonstrates.

> But it is the last patient of the day, Lee Burke, whose story

proves the

> most instructive, because her diagnosis turns out to be so simple,

while the

> forces that worked against it being made earlier were so complex.

>

> Seven years ago, Burke -- a delicately featured 56-year-old woman

in a blue

> cotton sweater that picks up the blue of her eyes and the gray in

her

> hair -- learned she had one of the most survivable varieties of

brain

> tumors, a growth known as an acoustic neuroma behind her left ear.

The

> recovery period from the surgery to remove it was supposed to be a

mere

> seven weeks. Instead, she awoke from surgery with an unforeseen

problem. She

> had headaches -- lancinating lightning, hot pain -- that knocked

her out for

> periods ranging from four hours to four days. She never returned to

her job

> as an executive at a real-estate company. When pain came between

her and her

> husband, she left him -- and her money and her home. ''It was

easier to be

> alone with the pain,'' Burke says.

>

> Carr asks her to describe the headaches. Like most of the 100-odd

patients I

> observed in various pain clinics trying to describe their

suffering, Burke

> seems stumped by the question. Therein lies a specific damnation of

pain. As

> Elaine Scarry writes in her seminal book, ''The Body in Pain,''

pain is not

> a linguistic experience; it returns us to ''the world of cries and

> whispers.'' Patients grope at far-fetched metaphors. ''A hot,

banging pain,

> like an ice pick,'' says one. ''It heats up and then sticks it in,

again and

> again.''

>

> Says Burke: ''It's like being slammed into a wall and totally

destroyed. It

> makes you want to pull every hair out of your head. There's nothing

I can do

> to defend myself.'' She looks at Carr with the particular stricken

> bewilderment -- why and why me? -- that I saw on the faces of so

many pain

> patients. Pain, from the Latin word for punishment, poena, can feel

like the

> work of a torturer who must have -- but won't reveal -- a

purpose. ''It's

> like knives are going through my eyes,'' she says, starting to weep.

>

> While she blots her face, Carr sits calmly, his concentration

fixed, his

> hands folded reassuringly across his lap, with the equable,

impersonal

> kindness of a priest or a cop. Almost all of the patients during

the long

> day have broken down in their appointments. Perhaps because their

lives echo

> the chaos in his own blue-collar Irish-Catholic upbringing as the

son of an

> alcoholic bartender, he says, he isn't alarmed when patients scream

at him.

> He is neither indifferent to emotion nor distracted by it; you

sense at all

> times that his focus is on the culprit -- the shape-shifter, the

pain.

>

> Carr asks Burke to close her eyes and taps her head with the corner

of an

> unopened alcohol wipe. Within a few minutes he has found a clear

pattern of

> numbness that suggests that one of the main nerves in her face --

the

> occipital nerve -- was severed or damaged during her surgery. It is

clear

> from their differing expressions that Carr regards this as

revelation -- the

> demystification of her pain -- and that Burke has no idea why.

>

> Pain makes a child of everyone. Her voice becomes small as she

asks, ''If

> the nerve was cut, why does it cause pain?''

>

>

> It is a question researchers have only recently been able to

answer. Doctors

> used to be so confident that severed nerves could not transmit

pain --

> they're severed! -- that nerve cutting was commonly prescribed as a

> treatment for pain. But while cut motor nerves can be counted on to

cause

> paralysis, sensory nerves are tricky. Sometimes they stay dead,

causing only

> numbness. But sometimes they grow back irregularly or begin firing

> spontaneously and produce stabbing, electrical or shooting

sensations.

>

> Picture the pain wiring of the nervous system as an alarm, the

body's

> evolutionary warning system that protects it from tissue injury or

disease.

> Acute pain is like a properly working alarm system: the pain

proportionally

> matches the amount of damage, and it disappears when the underlying

problem

> does. Chronic pain is like a broken alarm: a wire is cut and the

entire

> system goes haywire. ''This is true pathology -- the repair doesn't

occur,

> because the system itself is damaged,'' explains Clifford Woolf, an

> M.D.-Ph.D. pain researcher and the director of Mass. General's

> neuroplasticity lab. It is called neuropathic pain because it is a

pathology

> of the nervous system.

>

> Woolf was the first to answer an old puzzle: why does chronic pain

often

> worsen over time? Why doesn't the body develop tolerance? Woolf's

research

> demonstrated that physical pain changes the body in the same way

that

> emotional loss watermarks the soul. The body's pain system is

plastic and

> therefore can be molded by pain to cause, yes, more pain. An oft-

used

> metaphor is that of an alarm continually reset to be more

sensitive: first

> it is triggered by a cat, then a breeze and then for no reason it

begins to

> ring randomly or continuously. As recent research by Allan Basbaum

at the

> University of California at San Francisco has shown, with prolonged

injury

> progressively deeper levels of pain cells in the spinal cord are

activated.

> Pain nerves recruit others in a ''chronic-pain windup,'' and the

whole

> central nervous system revs up and undergoes what Woolf

calls ''central

> sensitization.''

>

>

> Lee Burke's records do not even note whether her occipital nerve

was cut,

> and her surgeon may not have noticed the dental-floss-size nerve.

It took

> more than a year of complaints before she was referred to Dr.

> Acquadro, the director of cancer pain at Mass. General, who noted

that she

> had severe muscle spasms in her head, neck and shoulders. It was a

classic

> pain misinterpretation: he seized on muscular pain as the primary

problem,

> rather than a secondary symptom, and diagnosed tension headaches.

>

> He treated her with Botox injections, tricyclic antidepressants and

migraine

> medications. She tried range-of-motion physical therapy, stress-

reduction

> courses, psychiatric treatment, yoga and meditation and consumed

3,200

> milligrams of ibuprofen a day, along with 12 cups of coffee

(caffeine is a

> treatment for migraines). He steered her away from opiates with

warnings

> about their addictive qualities.

>

> Until recently, opiates were the only serious pain drug available.

But

> neuropathic pain is the kind of pain for which opiates are the least

> effective. In the past few years, however, an alternative has come

along. A

> new antiseizure drug, Neurontin, has been found to also act as a

nerve

> stabilizer that can quiet the misfiring nerves responsible for

neuropathic

> pain.

>

> When I call her four months after the appointment with Carr, Burke

says she

> feels 50 percent better from a combination of Neurontin and other

drugs. The

> muscle spasms -- so rigid that Acquadro compared them to railroad

tracks --

> had melted. She no longer needed a snorkel for her daily swim

because she

> could move her head from side to side again. Of course, you have to

be in

> terrible pain to find the side effects of pain drugs tolerable. But

while

> her headaches sometimes required so much Neurontin that she was too

dazed to

> walk, she was glad to be able to sit up to watch television instead

of

> simply lying prone in agony.

>

> ''Dr. Carr is my savior,'' she says. I recall the way she left the

> appointment, clasping his hand as if she wanted to kiss it and

looking at

> him with hope so intense it was hard to watch.

>

>

> ''There's tremendous ignorance about neuropathic pain,'' Woolf

says. ''Most

> doctors don't know to look for it.'' One confusing factor is that

not all

> patients with similar conditions develop chronic pain. Neuropathic

pain

> seems to require genetic vulnerability. Pain clinics are filled with

> patients with ordinary conditions and extraordinary pain. M.R.I.'s

show only

> bones and tissue; doctors might look at a patient's scan and

say, ''Your

> back looks fine -- the muscle swelling is gone'' or ''The bone's all

> healed,'' and conclude there is no reason for pain. But the pain is

not in

> the muscles or bones; it is in the invisible hydra of the nerves.

>

> Of course, not all chronic pain is neuropathic -- there is

inflammatory

> pain, for example, or muscular pain. But many chronic-pain

conditions, like

> backache, which was once assumed to be wholly musculoskeletal, are

now

> thought to have a neuropathic component.

>

> About 10 percent of women used to complain of chronic pain

following radical

> mastectomies. Their pain had always been interpreted as a

psychological

> phenomenon: they were just ''missing'' their breasts. But in the

early

> 1980's, Dr. Kathleen Foley at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer

Center in New

> York identified the pain as being caused by the severing of a major

thoracic

> nerve during surgery, and the technique was revised.

>

> Doctors warn patients of many risks, from death to scarring, but

rarely

> mention the not-uncommon side effect of chronic pain. The life of

one of

> Carr's patients was ruined by having a nerve nicked during plastic

surgery

> to correct protruding ears. Another acquired chronic chest pain

after being

> treated in a hospital for a collapsed lung when a tube was inserted

in her

> chest -- one of the most nerve-rich areas in the body. One

especially

> poignant category of patients in pain clinics is that of those who

have had

> surgery specifically to treat chronic -- usually back -- pain where

the

> surgery leads to new, worse pain, an outcome for which they say

they had no

> warning.

>

>

> Pain doctors have many theories about why these kinds of things

happen, but

> the dialogue is frustratingly one-sided. There are no spokesmen for

> undertreating pain -- no one advocates not treating pain.

>

> Although I contacted many of the former doctors of pain patients,

it was

> rare that one was willing to examine his decisions thoughtfully, as

> Acquadro did. It was immediately clear to me that Acquadro, a

licensed

> dentist as well as an anesthesiologist, was both competent and

caring and

> that the forces that delayed Burke's treatment were not personal

> shortcomings but genuine, pervasive confusions about pain.

>

> Acquadro thought the pain of all acoustic neuroma patients should

manifest

> itself similarly, and most of those he had seen did, in

fact, ''respond to

> simpler, more holistic therapies.'' He had not thought of

Neurontin, and he

> feared opiates. ''We don't always do patients a favor putting them

on

> high-dose narcotics,'' he says. ''When a patient is depressed or

anxious,

> you're leery about narcotics or alcohol. With Lee, I guess I'd have

to say I

> was being cautious.'' His voice changes -- softens and quiets -- as

he gets

> to the real point: ''I was afraid.''

>

> Like many doctors, he says he felt comfortable with anti-

inflammatory drugs,

> although the 3,200 milligrams of ibuprofen that Burke took daily

put her at

> risk for gastrointestinal bleeding. According to the Federal Drug

Abuse

> Warning Network, anti-inflammatory drugs (including aspirin and

Aleve) were

> implicated in the deaths of 16,000 people in 2000 because of

bleeding ulcers

> and related complications. While large doses of the drugs are

sometimes

> needed to treat inflammation, opiates are a much safer -- and

generally more

> effective -- analgesic.

>

> Although far fewer than 1 percent of pain patients using opiates

develop any

> addictive behavior, opiates have a reputation for being dangerous,

and

> social biases -- class, race and sex -- influence who is entrusted

with

> them. Studies by Dr. Payne at Sloan-Kettering show that

minorities

> are up to three times as likely as others to receive inadequate pain

> relief -- and to have their requests for medication interpreted as

bad

> ''drug-seeking behavior.'' A study conducted by Dr.

Breitbart at

> Sloan-Kettering found that women with H.I.V. are twice as likely to

be

> undertreated for pain as men. Many of Carr's patients have some

social

> strike against them that led their previous doctors to withhold

treatment:

> two were workers' compensation cases, one was mentally ill, several

had

> histories of substance abuse, all of them were poor and most were

women.

>

> Women tend to be either less aggressive in demanding pain treatment

or to be

> aggressive in ways that are misinterpreted as hysteria. The longer

pain goes

> untreated, the more desperate and crazed the patient becomes --

until those

> behaviors look like the problem. Burke recalls that whenever

Acquadro sent

> her to other specialists -- headache specialists, balance

specialists and

> behavioral pain-medicine specialists -- she would break down during

the

> appointments in pain and frustration. ''They all just figured I was

a basket

> case,'' she says. ''And I was. I was a basket case.''

>

> Rather than dismiss her psychic distress, Acquadro seems to have

become

> overly focused on it, trying to explain her pain through that

prism: ''Lee's

> pain seemed to be better at the times she was happier, was forming

new

> relationships or helping others,'' he says. ''And even though she

was

> motivated and worked hard on stress reduction, the fact remains,

she is a

> tense person.''

>

> Naturally. Everyone who has chronic pain eventually develops

anxiety and

> depression. Anxiety and depression are not merely cognitive

responses to

> pain; they are physiologic consequences of it. Pain and depression

share

> neural circuitry. The hormones that modulate a healthy brain, like

serotonin

> and endorphins, are the same ones that modulate depression.

> Functional-imaging scans reveal similar disturbances in brain

chemistry in

> both chronic pain and depression.

>

> ''Chronic pain uses up serotonin like a car running out of gas,''

says

> Breitbart. ''If the pain persists long enough, everybody runs out

of gas.''

> Thus, Acquadro's not treating Burke's pain aggressively because she

was

> ''tense'' is like ''not rescuing someone who is drowning because

they're

> having a panic attack,'' according to Breitbart. Difficulty

breathing

> triggers panic as reliably as pain causes depression. When

serotonin is

> inhibited in laboratory animals, morphine ceases to have an

analgesic effect

> on them. Medications that treat depression also treat pain.

Depression or

> stressful events can in turn enhance pain. Since Sept. 11, pain

clinics have

> been fuller. ''If we started putting sugar in the water, it would

affect the

> diabetics first -- pain patients respond to stress with increased

pain,''

> explains Fishman, who also trained as a psychiatrist. But to

make

> stress reduction a primary strategy for pain treatment is trying to

repaint

> the walls of a crumbling house.

>

>

> It is an easy mistake to make -- and one I made myself. i developed

pain

> five years ago for, what seemed to me, absolutely no reason. A fiery

> sensation flared in my neck, flowed through my right shoulder and

sizzled in

> my hand. It didn't feel like normal pain -- it felt like a demon

had rested

> a hand on my shoulder. Suddenly I tasted brimstone and burning.

>

> Two years later, an M.R.I. would reveal spinal stenosis, a

narrowing of the

> spinal canal, and cervical spondylosis, a type of arthritis, both

of which

> squeeze the nerves and cause pain to radiate into my shoulder and

hand. But

> in the meantime, I was convinced that if I steadfastly ignored it,

the pain

> would eventually go its own way. I tried to treat it as a

psychological

> problem. Many pain patients have had doctors who pathologized them,

told

> them their pain was unreal; I pathologized myself, hoping my pain

was

> unreal -- or that it would become so if I treated it as such.

>

> I analyzed the pain in psychotherapy. I tried acupuncture, massage

and

> herbal remedies. I read books about conversion hysteria, the

placebo effect

> and Sufis who thread fishhooks through their pectoral muscles. What

I didn't

> read was anything that might have actually informed me about my

symptoms,

> like Fishman's excellent patient-oriented book, ''The War on

Pain.'' Nor did

> I consult any clarifying Web sites, like painfoundation.org.

>

> When the pain depressed me, I focused on the depression. I adopted

Dr.

> E. Sarno's popular creed that muscular tension syndrome is the

source of

> most back ills and faithfully scrutinized my life for stress. It is

one of

> those circular self-confirming hypotheses: when I was happy and my

pain

> light, I took it as confirmation of the correlation; when I was

happy but

> had a lot of pain, I wondered if I didn't want to be happy. I

recall how,

> strapped inside the white crypt of the M.R.I. machine for more than

an hour,

> I tried to calm myself by repeating the motto of my Christian

Scientist

> grandparents: ''There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance

in

> matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation.'' But

I sensed

> the machine was seeing my pain in its own way and that its report

would be

> irrefutable. My pain would no longer be a tree falling in the

forest with no

> one to hear it. The greatest fear pain patients have, doctors

sometimes say,

> is that it is ''all in their heads.'' But infinitely scarier, I

thought as I

> lay there, is the fear that it isn't.

>

> This is the new frontier of medicine,'' Clifford Woolf says

heatedly in his

> clipped South African accent. ''What we're learning is that chronic

pain is

> not just a sensory or affective or cognitive state. It's a biologic

disease

> afflicting millions of people. We're not on the verge of curing

cancer or

> heart disease, but we are closing in on pain. Very soon, I believe,

there

> will be effective treatment for pain because, for the first time in

history,

> the tools are coming together to understand and treat it.''

>

> The most important tool in his lab at Mass. General -- a vast

landscape of

> test tubes filled with rat DNA -- is the new ''gene chip''

technology that

> identifies which genes become active when neurons respond to

pain. ''In the

> past 30 years of pain research, we've looked for pain-related

genes, one at

> a time, and come up with 60. In the past year, using gene-chip

technology,

> we've come up with 1,500,'' Woolf says happily. ''We're drowning in

new

> information. All we have to do is read it all -- to prioritize, to

find the

> key gene, the master switch that drives others.''

>

> Woolf is particularly interested in certain abnormal sodium ion

channels

> that are only expressed in sensory neurons that have been damaged.

He

> believes he is close -- perhaps a year away -- from identifying

which among

> these channels is the most important one. Then -- if his animal

data applies

> to humans -- pharmaceutical companies could design blockers for

these

> channels, and after the years it takes to develop a new drug, there

could be

> a cure for neuropathic pain.

>

> On the table before us in Woolf's lab, a graduate student is

piercing the

> sciatic nerve of a white rat. The rat is of a pain-sensitive

variety, one

> prone to developing neuropathic pain. In 10 days, when Woolf cuts

open the

> rat's brain, he will be able to discern the imprint of the sciatic

nerve

> injury. There will be corresponding maladaptive changes in the way

the brain

> processes and generates pain.

>

> The biggest question of pain research is whether this pathological

cortical

> reorganization can be undone. A 1997 University of Toronto study

has shown

> disturbing implications. Taddio compared the pain responses of

groups

> of infant boys who had been circumcised with and without

anesthesia. Four to

> six months later, the latter group had a lowered pain threshold,

crying more

> at their first inoculations -- providing evidence that there is

cellular

> pain memory of damage to the immature nervous system.

>

> Terms like ''pathological cortical reorganization'' and ''cellular

pain

> memory'' have a very ominous ring. Are these children really doomed

to be

> more sensitive to pain their entire lives? Will a cure for

neuropathic pain

> help all the people who already have it -- or only prevent others

from

> developing it?

>

> Woolf looks at me and hesitates. ''We don't really know,'' he says

> tactfully. Another pause. ''In the present state, no.'' However, he

says,

> even if the damage cannot be undone, treatment could still help

suppress the

> abnormal sensitivity. ''But obviously, it's going to be much easier

to

> prevent the establishment of abnormal channels than to treat the

ones

> already there.'' He sighs, rests his head against his

hand. ''Obviously.''

>

> I want to ask another question, but I'm overcome by a rare

unreporterly

> desire. I want him to get back to work.

>

>

> Thernstrom is the author of ''The Dead Girl'' and ''Halfway

Heaven:

> Diary of a Harvard Murder.''

>

>

>

>

> Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

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Deborah posts <<<<<> from an article......<<<<with a stiff upper lip, pain

turns out to be harmful to the body.

Pain unleashes a cascade of negative hormones like cortisol that adversely

affect

the immune system and kidney function. Patients treated with morphine heal

more quickly after surgery. >>>>>>>>>

I have been aware of since, I had major surgery on one off my feet,

straightening of bones, cutting of tendons, cutting bone,

screws.....etc..........The Dr. prescribed Percoset, and insisted I take it

until, when I stopped it the medication......I felt NO pain. I told him I

have a high tolerance for pain..........he said that wasn't the

point........there are plenty of studies out there that state the body heals

a lot faster, if you aren't in PAIN.

This article confirms his point..............when you need meds for

pain...........take them...........

Conniek nwnj

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