klaus
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Feb 8, 2010, 9:21 AM
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It’s no secret that as people age various body parts begin to deteriorate. The usual harbinger of this deterioration is pain, which after all, is nature’s way of letting us know that something is amiss. Many conditions are treatable through various therapeutic methods such as physiotherapy, surgery, chiropractic or prescription medications.
But some conditions defy treatment and turn chronic. Fairly often doctors are willing to abandon a patient to a life of unrelieved pain for fear that pain management techniques in the form of prescription pain medication would cause dependence or addiction in the patient. I believe this to be a reprehensible practice for a number of reasons.
First, while there is a chance taking opiate-based pain medications such as Percocet over a long period of time can lead to dependence or addiction, it’s a small chance. Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician working with hopelessly addicted individuals in Vancouver’s notorious east end, has written in his seminal work In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, that not everyone who takes drugs over prolonged periods of time necessarily becomes addicted. In fact, he estimates that only about 5% of the overall population has a propensity to become addicted to drugs and he cites the experience of American soldiers serving in Vietnam as an example. Apparently heroin and opium use among U.S. soldiers was rampant, but the number of soldiers who returned to be hopelessly addicted was relatively small.
Yet every day many older people have to live with chronic painful conditions with very little assistance from their doctors in helping to manage their pain. Conditions such as the degeneration of discs in the spine are difficult to treat and can be unbearably painful. Surgical repair of these conditions is an option, but it’s also risky, especially in older people. More often than not, a pain management regimen that includes prescription pain relievers is one of the most effective methods of treating these conditions.
The great debate currently making the rounds among medical professionals concerns the advisability of prescribing morphine or other opioids to assist cancer patients in pain management. One side holds the position that a patient should have as much medication as is required to help bear the pain. The other maintains that making that much medication available to cancer patients could result in the patient becoming addicted.
My second point is that very often addiction is the least of a cancer patient's worries.
There are programs available that teach individuals how to live with “chronic conditions.” The focus of many such programs is to get the patient to find peace within herself and learn to live with the condition. They teach relaxation techniques, coping with stress, eating well, dealing with fatigue, etc. But they don’t actually include the alleviation of pain through medication.
It is clear that kindly and well-meaning healthcare professionals who are NOT feeling pain design such programs. And while learning coping skills to handle chronic conditions is a valuable endeavor, they do not alleviate the actual pain.
Keeping pain medication from elderly patients for fear that they might become drug dependent is nothing short of a God-complex.
Klaus Rohrich is President and Creative Director of Taylor/Rohrich Associates Inc., a marketing and advertising firm that specializes in niche marketing retirement real estate developments
http://www.maturitymarketing.com.
(This post was edited by klaus on Feb 8, 2010, 11:50 AM)
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