How To Manage The Chronic Pain?

Chronic pain is a whole saga in itself. Akhila Vijaykumar speaks to therapists and sufferers about living with it and managing it daily.

-  Akhila Vijaykumar

In September 2013, a herniated disc in my back rendered me bed-ridden for two weeks, making it too painful to look up at a clock, even while lying in bed. After coffinlike MRI machine scans, terrible online accounts of long-standing pain for years, weeks of pain at the smallest movement and more, I convinced myself that everything was temporary and I’d be back to riding my bike soon. I was wrong. Chronic pain isn’t a journey without a destination; rather it’s a process of accepting that your body has changed—it cannot do the things you did before, but it doesn’t mean that you will stop doing those things. You now treat your body with more respect and care. You are aware of your physical limits, and you plan ahead. You figure out alternatives, with options for every scenario. And you develop a sense of resilience—I am far more determined, far more invested now, after recovery, about going on no matter what.

THE BASICS

Nandlal Pathak, senior therapist, AktivOrtho, Delhi, says that chronic pain is anything that continues beyond 12 weeks, especially when there is a reccurrence of the same issue. “Chronic pain, and the fear of it, creates a pattern—the body adapts to avoid the pain. For example, if you’ve got pain on the right, your body will shift weight to the left.” The role of physical therapy, he says, is to identify and then treat the pattern, to train the brain to adapt to new patterns that facilitate healing.

MIND OVER ‘OW-OW-OW IT HURTS!’