About Pain
Pain: bodily, mental or emotional suffering as due to injury or illness.
Random House Dictionary
Pain is perfect misery, the worst of evils, and excessive, overturns all patience.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Pain is whatever the patient defines it to be.
Margo McCaffery
Facts About Pain
Pain is estimate to cost $100 billion annually in healthcare expenses, lost income, and lost productivity.
Pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.
Cancer Pain
Pain is part of daily life for many cancer patients, and is particularly common in those with advanced disease. Cancer survivors may experience pain that continues long after active cancer treatment concludes. Pain affects an estimated:
- 30% of patients newly diagnosed with cancer
- 30%-50% of patients undergoing treatment
- 70%-90% of patients with advanced disease
Cancer pain can almost always be relieved or lessened.Many people with cancer experience pain, and it can be relieved in most cases. Left untreated, pain can weaken the immune system and slow recovery. Open communication with healthcare professionals about pain is essential to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life.
Controlling your cancer pain is part of your cancer treatment.
Your doctor wants and needs to hear about what works for your pain and what does not. Knowing about the pain will help your doctor know more about how the cancer and the treatment are affecting your body. Talking about pain will not distract your doctor from treating the cancer.
Pain is best relieved when treated early.
You may hear some people refer to this as “staying on top” of the pain. Do not try to hold off as long as possible between doses. Pain may get worse if you wait. Then it may take longer, or you may need larger doses, for your medicine to give you relief.
You have a right to ask for pain relief.
Talking about your pain is not a sign of weakness. Not everyone feels pain in the same way. There is no need to “tough it out” or be “brave” if you seem to have more pain than other people with the same kind of cancer. In fact, as soon as you have any pain you should speak up. Remember, it is easier to control pain right when it starts rather than waiting until after it becomes severe.
Addiction is a common fear of people taking pain medicine.
Such fear may even keep people from taking the medicine. Or it may cause family members to encourage you to hold off as long as you can between doses. Some pain medicines can cause you to feel sleepy when you first start taking them. This feeling usually goes away within a few days. Sometimes you become drowsy because now that the pain is under control, you are able to catch up on the much-needed sleep you missed when you were in pain. Sometimes, people get dizzy or feel confused when they take pain medicines. Tell your doctor or nurse if this happens to you. Changing your dose or type of medicine can often solve these problems. Some medicines can cause nausea and vomiting, itching, constipation, or drowsiness. A few can cause liver or kidney damage. Your doctor or nurse can help you manage these side effects. But some of these problems go away after a few days of taking the medicine. And many side effects can be managed by changing the medicine, the dose, or the times when the medicine is taken. Others, like constipation, can often be prevented with stool softeners and other measures.
Pain should be treated early, and stronger medicines should not be saved for later.
It is important to take whatever medicine is needed when it is needed. Your body may get used to the medicine you are taking then the medicine may not relieve the pain as well as it once did. This is called tolerance. Tolerance is seldom a problem with cancer pain treatment because your doctor can increase the amount of medicine you are taking or add other medicines. Some people are alarmed by this because they are afraid it means they are addicted, but it is not the same thing. It only means that the body has learned to adjust to the drug in your system over time. When pain is not relieved, you may feel:
Your body does not become immune to pain medicine.
Side effects from pain medicines can be managed and often even prevented.
Most people do not get high or lose control when they take cancer pain medicines the way they are told to.
Addiction is defined as uncontrollable drug craving, seeking, and continued use. When opioids (also known as narcotics) — the strongest pain relievers available — are taken for pain, they rarely cause addiction as defined here. When you are ready to stop taking opioids, the doctor will lower the amount of medicine you are taking over a few days or weeks. By the time you stop using it completely, your body has had time to adjust. Talk to your doctor, nurse, or pharmacist about how to take pain medicines safely and about any concerns you have about addiction. People who take cancer pain medicines the way the doctor or nurse tells them to rarely become addicted to them.
Keeping pain from starting and keeping it from getting worse are the best ways to control it.
There are many medicines and methods that can be used to control cancer pain. You should expect your health care team to work with you to keep you as comfortable as possible. But no one doctor can know everything about all medical problems, and sometimes pain is a subject they don’t know as much about. Even though a lot of progress has been made, some doctors and nurses do not know the best ways to treat cancer pain. If you are in pain and your doctor has nothing more to offer, ask to see a pain specialist or have your doctor consult with a pain specialist. Pain specialists may be oncologists, anesthesiologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, other doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. A pain control team may also include psychologists and social workers.
If you have trouble finding a pain program or pain specialist, contact a cancer center, a hospice, or the oncology department of your local hospital or medical center. They should be able to recommend someone to you.
Information provided by the American Cancer Society. For more information about cancer pain, visit www.cancer.org