A description of my interest and experience with pain and related stigma I think what catalyzed my interest in pain was, of course, my own experience. I was hospitalized for severe abdominal pain, and at the time, I remember the pain was so severe that literally nothing else mattered to me. The problem was, nobody…
Life can be stressful, and we all want to suffer less. There is so much information out there, so where do we start? When I was in the Navy, it was 2002 to 2007, I was a Navy Corpsman, aka “Doc” and worked with the Marines. Basically, that is a Medic/EMT ( we did…
“The body is more than simply another machine, indistinguishable from the artificial objects of the world; it is also the vessel of the individuals’ sense of self, his or her most personal feelings and aspirations… ” (Gardner, 2011). A number of my clients struggle with low self-esteem and body image concerns. Indeed, they are not…
Overview Pain is an essential stimulus to signal the brain when something is not right. Sensing pain is a universal experience that all of us go through, except for a small subset of patients who suffer from an extremely rare condition known as congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). Unfortunately, pain can become a chronic condition,…
An extremely common issue I’m faced with in the treatment setting is depression, coupled with chronic pain. In my field, we reference these individuals as the co-morbid, meaning there are two or more illnesses occurring within an individual at the same time. This is important to note because often times, treating the issues simultaneously yields…
Chronic pain—once considered just a symptom, but now a disease in its own right— has been estimated to affect between 30-50% of the world population. It has become an important public health problem costing society in excess $635 billion annually due to health care costs and lost productivity. Given the lack of media attention and…