Word: paines
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...told, nearly one-third of the American population have persistent or recurrent chronic pain, according to Seattle Anesthesiologist John Bonica, founder of the International Association for the Study of Pain and a world-renowned leader in pain research. Of these, he estimates, one-half to two-thirds are partly or totally disabled for periods of days, weeks or months, or for life. "Chronic pain disables more people than cancer or heart disease," says Bonica, "and it costs the American people more money than both." His estimate: $70 billion a year in medical costs, lost working days and compensation. The human...
Mark Metcalf, 35, of Berkeley, Calif., endured weeks of pain that "felt like I had a hot iron held against the side of my neck," and he found himself "considering suicide as a rational alternative." Every year a number of the chronically suffering make that choice. Pain, said Albert Schweitzer, "is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death himself...
...common reason for seeing a doctor. It is the No. 1 reason people take medication. And yet for a variety of reasons, medical science is ill equipped to deal with pain. While the 20th century has brought remarkable advances in the treatment and in some cases the elimination of disease, doctors' understanding of pain is just beginning to emerge from the dark ages. "Pain is the weak link in modern medicine," says Dr. Josef Wang, director of the pain center at the Mayo Clinic. To begin with, medical students receive only the scantest introduction to the subject...
...little that is known about pain and how to treat it is often misunderstood or ignored by physicians. A 1973 study by Psychiatrists Richard Marks and Edward Sachar of New York City's Montefiore Hospital found that nearly 75% of hospitalized patients receiving narcotics for moderate to severe pain failed to be relieved by the drugs. A review of their charts showed why. The dosages prescribed by their doctors were 25% to 50% less than what was needed to relieve severe pain. Records showed that nurses had further reduced these dosages substantially. The result: some patients were receiving less...
...missing. A large open wound covers one knee, and the smiling lips are bitten raw. He looks for all the world like a battered child, but only nature is to blame for his condition. He was born with an extremely rare genetic defect that makes him insensitive to pain. His fingers were either crushed or burned because he did not pull his hand away from things that were hot or dangerous. His bones and joints are misshapen because he pounded them too hard when he walked or ran. His knee had ulcerated from crawling over sharp objects that he could...