The Truth about Chronic Pain

by Arthur Rosenfeld

It's all in your head. "Learn to bear it." "That drug will make you a junkie."For the more than 75 million Americans affected by chronic pain, these are fighting words.Despite extraordinary medical progress in recent years, millions of people, debilitated by the pain of incurable cancer, crippling arthritis, unremitting headaches, and a host of degenerative disorders, continue to suffer needlessly. Here, in their own words, are the stories of more than forty people whose lives are dictated by pain-patients, healthcare professionals, ethicists, social commentators, and scientists-shining a powerful searchlight on America's most misunderstood health problem.The Truth About Chronic Pain reveals why pain is so often ignored or under-treated. Among the reasons are the widespread belief that pain is a sign of weakness and the unfounded fears that properly administered painkillers will cause addiction. As bureaucrats, doctors, and pharmacists become adversaries in the War on Drugs, people in pain are often denied the relief they need.The voices on these pages are an eloquent testament to individual courage and a powerful plea to medical institutions, political leaders, and insurance companies to implement effective solutions to the problem of pain.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Born Arthur Rosenfeld in America, Yun Rou (the name means Soft Cloud) was ordained a Daoist monk in China. Host of the hit national public television show "Longevity Tai Chi with Arthur Rosenfeld", he is the author of award-winning titles and teaches tai chi around the world and in South Florida. As did Alan Watts, his non-fiction books use the wisdom of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching to address climate change, the challenges of culture, society, and everyday living, advancing prescriptions as useful as those in Wayne Dyer's "Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life", but with the east-meets-west philosophical flavor of Eckhart Tolle and Henry David Thoreau. His novels, by contrast, bring a New York literary sensibility to the emerging "Silkpunk" genre, blending Chinese history, some science fiction, and fantasy into adventurous, rollicking, thought-provoking reads.

Reviews

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

50 pages into this book I was convinced it must be paid for by the drug companies and I nearly stopped reading it. I am glad I stuck through it to the end.

The book offers interviews with pain patients, health care professionals, and then various commentators.

The book primarily focuses on the use of opioids for the treatment of pain. I have been dealing with chronic pain for 3 years now, and I am trying not to go that route. I was really hoping that the book would go into some of the alternative therapies, but I feel those options were really only briefly mentioned.

I do still feel like I learned a lot about the nature of chronic pain even if the book didn't offer additional therapy options for me to check into as I had hoped.

I cannot review this book without mentioning that there were interviews with at least 3 people who seemed incapable of compassion and empathy for other people. These kinds of people scare me very much. I find it completely despicable that 2 of them are practicing doctors. Disgusting.

[Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not planning on putting every medical book I pick up, but this is a good read on its own. The subtitle must have been written by marketing people, because it doesn't really convey the focus of the book. This is a series of interviews with patients, practitioners and "thinkers" about chronic pain. The last section is the weakest, as some of the thinkers aren't easily separated from practitioners while others just don't seem to belong (Marilyn vos Savant??!). For people who have any interest at all in the subject, it is interesting to hear the various voices describe first hand their experience with long-term pain.

[Eglizard · Rating 5 out of 5]

At Half-Price Books, they laughed at the check-out, saying, of the code label, this one had been on the shelf for 8 years undisturbed. Why?, I thought, with opioids constantly in the news. The title might as well be “Truths” because there are many. By way of interviews, pain levels and qualities are told by male and female patients (attorney, paralegal, artist, football player, association president, teenager, psychologist, and the military). Following are the views of caregivers (neurologist, physiologist, obstetric anesthetist, radiologist, massage therapist, hypnotist, rheumatologist, sports body worker, clinical pharmacologist, dentist), and thinkers, theorists, philosophers. Patients had diagnoses of fibromyalgia, AIDS, injuries, multiple surgeries, arthritis, cancer, migraine, phantom limb pain, stroke. Their experiences and opinions are fascinating. One pain may have multiple causes and need multiple methods for relief. Pros and cons of opioids are thoroughly discussed

[JoAnne Spiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an older book, but still has some valuable advice in it. It was comforting to find a book that validates the issues that go along with chronic pain diseases!

[Naye Aguilar]

i love it, and i so exited to want to reade, its timeee